MESSES. A. AND E. NEWTON ON THE OSTEOLOGY OE THE SOLITAIEE. 355 
many other birds, and theirs is literally pugnacity, for, the majority not possessing any 
other weapons of attack or defence, their battles consist of a succession of cuffs and 
buffetings administered by the wings. Leguat speaks of his having witnessed the 
combats of his Solitaires, and it is quite possible that these engagements were occasion- 
ally even more serious than any of which he was an eye-witness, for we find in the col- 
lection a fair proportion of broken hones, broken and mended during the bird’s life. 
Among these are examples of the ulna (Plate XX. fig. 135), radius, and coracoid (Plate 
XX. fig. 136)*. 
The particular in which we think Leguat may have erred is in the assertion (or per- 
haps rather inference) as to their monogamous habits, and the cause of the error (if such 
it be) may, we think, be ascribed, without derogation of his truthfulness or accuracy, to 
his anxiety to point a moral which has led him to imagine he saw what he wished to 
seef. We think we are right in saying that most monogamous animals when they fight 
at all fight without regard to sex. Now in describing the combats of these birds he 
especially mentions that the opposite sexes would not fight with one another, but that 
the combatants were invariably of the same sex, and this is just what occurs in poly- 
gamous birds. However it is not always easy to decide whether a species is mono- 
gamous or the contrary. Respecting a species which has been so much studied, and 
of which so much has been written as the Bustard ( Otis tarda), it seems undecided 
whether it is polygamous or not, though the testimony is on the whole in favour of its 
occasionally being so It is therefore not to be wondered at if Leguat, setting aside 
even his evident leaning, should have been mistaken in this particular. We venture 
here to reproduce some remarks on this matter, which one of us has already made. 
“ So far as I know, none of the existing Columbce represent any remarkable sexual 
distinctions^ either in bulk or otherwise. As a group, the Pigeons are remarkably, and, 
relatively to most birds, abnormally uniform in this respect. In the species [Pezofthaps] 
to which the bones now exhibited belong, however, the contrary is most conspicuously 
* This last is exactly matched by a specimen, of Diclus in our possession. 
t A great part of the misfortunes with which Leguat was afflicted during his absence from Europe arose from 
the determination of leaving Eodriguez, at which his companions, overruling his own wish, arrived. This de- 
termination was, as he naively tells us (op. cit. 1st ed. vol. i. pp. 148-154, Engl, transl. pp. 107-112), finally 
brought about by the fact that, in founding their proposed colony, they had altogether forgotten the necessity of 
including the softer sex in their company ! He consequently never loses an opportunity of inculcating the pru- 
dence of making early marriages, and calls his dear Solitaires to witness to their expediency. 
t Of. Naumaxx, ‘ Ydgel Deutschlands,’ vol. vii. pp. 35-41 ; Stevexsox, ‘Birds of Norfolk,’ vol. ii. p. 13. 
§ Mr. Darwix (Yariation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i. p. 162, note) demurs to this 
assertion and cites the case of Carpophaga oceanica, in which he says the excrescence at the base of the beak is 
“ sexual.” "Whether or not it is so we have no means of judging, hut the word “ sexual” has been accidentally 
substituted by him for “ seasonal,” and therefore his remark does not hear on the question. On the other 
hand we are ready to admit that the assertion is not so universally true as it was thought to be when made. 
Our friend Mr. Osbert Salvix has shown us two species of Chamcepelia in which the plumage of the two sexes 
exhibits a manifest difference, and Mr. Waeeace (Ibis, 1865, pp. 365-400) cites some similar instances among 
the Malayan Pigeons. 
3 b 2 
