163 
of the Mascarene Islands. 
bable, too, that Flamingos which were found in Madagascar, as 
Flacourt* says, should visit Bourbon and Mauritius in their 
wanderings. The Giant Waterhen, on the contrary, was 
doubtless not found in Madagascar, since no writer men¬ 
tions it. 
We come now to the second extinct bird of the Mascarene 
Islands, which, in our opinion, has been completely mistaken by 
authors. This is the so-called Oiseau bleu of Bourbon, described 
in the manuscript of a certain D. B.f, where [p. 183] we read as 
follows:— “ Oiseaux Mens, gros comme les Solitaires, ont le plu¬ 
mage tout bleu, le bee et les pieds rouges faits comme pieds de 
ponies, ils ne volent point,mais ils courent extremementvite,telle- 
rnent qu 5 un chien a peine d’en attraper a la course; ils sont tres 
bons.” The size of the Solitaire is given in the same manuscript as 
that of a “grosse Oye” ; while Castleton, or rather TattonJ, and 
Carre §, both give the Solitaire the size of a Turkey. Strick¬ 
lands || opinion on this bird runs as follows :—“I should have 
been disposed to refer the “ Oiseau bleu ” to the genus Porphyrio , 
were we not told that they were the size of the Solitaire, i. e. of 
a large Goose, that the feet resembled those of a hen, and that 
they never fly.” These objections are, however, of no value; for, 
1st, we know a species of Porphyrio (the Notornis 7nantelli of 
New Zealand) which is nearly as big as a Goose; 2ndly, there 
are several species of Waterhens whose feet are like those of a 
Hen, or, in other words, which have thick feet with toes short 
in proportion, as, for instance, Tribonyx,Ocydromus, and Notornis ; 
3rdly, the wings also of Notornis and Ocydromus are unfit for 
flight, and the quills of the last-named bird are even as soft as 
ordinary feathers. The guarded, though incorrect, opinion of 
Strickland has been followed by the strange theory of De Selys- 
Longchamps^f concerning the Oiseau bleu of Bourbon; for he has 
referred this bird to one and the same family as the entirely 
* Histoire de la grande lie de Madagascar, 1661, p. 164, under the 
name of Sambe. 
t Mentioned for the first time by Strickland in the ‘ Proceedings of 
the Zoological Society ’ for 1844, p. 77, and afterwards in his work ‘The 
Dodo, &c.,’ p. 59. 
% Purchas, Pilgrimes, 1625, i. p. 331. § Voyages, i. p. 12. || Loc. cit. 
H Revue Zoologique, Oct. 1848, p. 3 [ potiils , p. 294]. 
M 2 
