338 
Mr. E. Newton's Second Visit to Madagascar. 
and I killed him. On picking him up, I found he had been 
robbing some water-fowl's nest, his mouth and crop containing 
three young birds, evidently taken from the egg-shell, with 
fragments of the latter, coloured pinkish white, with red spots, 
like that of a Water-rail or Porphyrio. We looked for the nest 
in vain, and I presume the canoe must have passed right over it 
and swamped it. 
On skinning the bird, I found it was a male, though in the 
brown-streaked plumage, and therefore probably a young bird. 
The Marmites knew the bird at once, and pronounced it to be 
much more destructive to chickens than the “ Papango''*; it can¬ 
not, however, be very common, as this is only the second example 
of the genus I have ever met with in Madagascar. Iris yellow, 
tip of beak black, base horn-colour, cere yellow, claws black. 
6. Polyboroides madagascariensis (Daudin). 
“ Feheark.'' 
I saw this species on two occasions about ten miles up the 
Hivondrona, and also at Foule Point, where I observed, in a 
freshly skinned specimen, that the legs bend back in the same 
manner as described by Mr. Ayres (Ibis, 1859, p. 237) when 
writing of its congener, P. typicus. 
7. ? Otus madagascariensis , A. Smith. 
Captain Anson, when close to Tamatave on his return from 
Antananarivo, wounded a brown Owl, which he brought on 
board the ‘ Gorgon' alive; but it died the first night, and the 
Malagasy servants, from their stupid superstition, threw it over¬ 
board. It appeared to me to be identical with the specimen 
obtained by Dr. Mellerfj which was sent to England some 
months after his return from the capital. At Ampasimaventy 
I heard, at night, the cry of a bird, which I was told was a 
species of “ Vorondoio,” but brown, and with a head like that of 
an Ox ! Captain Anson's bird had no appearance of tufts; it was, 
however, hardly old enough to have shown them distinctly. 
* It is, perhaps, worth while mentioning, that a specimen of a Harrier 
in the museum here, and which is said to have come from Reunion, is 
labelled “ Papango.” 
't This was Otus madagascariensis; see P. Z. S. 1863, p. 160, where a 
list of Dr. Meller’s collection is given.— Ed. 
