132 Appendices 
it is not at all improbable (so it seems to me) that the keeper of 
such a bird would consult his own safety, and by trimming an 
offensive weapon so likely to be used against him, deprive it of 
the means of doing harm. On this account, therefore, I think 
there seems to be a strong probability of this drawing having been 
taken from a living subject which had been brought to Europe 
and kept in some aviary. . . . 
And now as to the artist by whom this drawing was executed. 
In its left hand corner are to be plainly seen the letters P. W. fe: 
and on consulting Brulliot’s Dictionnaire de Monogrammes , I find 
(p. 321, Nouv. Ed. Sec. Partie. Munich, 1833) that this is the 
signature of Pierre Witthoos, ‘qui peignait a la gouache des 
fleurs, des insectes, et des plantes avec beaucoup d’art et de verite,’ 
and died at Amsterdam in 1693. It is, therefore, quite pos¬ 
sible that the figure I have before mentioned in Zaagman’s edition 
of Bontekoe . . . and the present drawing, were both taken from 
the same source, probably a bird brought from the Island of 
Bourbon, and kept alive at Amsterdam. 
APPENDIX B. 
On some Extinct Gigantic Birds of the Mascarene Islands. By 
H. Schlegel. Contributed, in 1857, to the Dutch Academy of 
Sciences, published the next year, and translated for the Ibis 
by Mr. J. H. Hessels. 
Extract from the Ibis, April, 1866, pp. 163-168. 
. 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., 1 where [p. 183] we read as 
follows:— £ Oiseaux bleus , gros comme les Solitaires , ont le 
plumage tout bleu, le bee et les pieds rouges faits comme pieds 
de poules, ils ne volent point, mais ils courent extremement vite, 
tellement qu’un chien a peine d’en attraper a la course; ils sont 
tres bons.’ The size of the Solitaire is given in the same manu- 
1 Mentioned for the first time by Strickland, in the Proceedings of the Zoo¬ 
logical Society for 1844, p. 77; and afterwards in his work The Dodo , etc., 
P- 59- 
