27 
the Monograph on the Solitaire that its affinity to the Dodo “is nowhere better shown 
than on a comparison of the sterna of the two forms”! 
The deeper and more approximate coracoid grooves in the sternum of Pezophaps 
relate to the greater size, thickness, and breadth, especially of the sternal half and 
articular end of the coracoid in that extinct genus. In additional specimens of the 
sternum of Didus, the antero-median depression of the immer surface is more marked 
than in the subject of fig, 2, pl. 18 (O.); but in none has it perforated the bone as 
in fig. 74, pl. 18 (N.). Considering the peculiarity of the configuration of sternum 
in the Solitaire and Dodo—unlike that of any other bird known to me, as to 
Messrs. Newton—the degree of affinity of the two forms appears to be closer than 
would admit of real or intelligible generic distinction. The Solitaire isa longer-legged, 
more active, variety of Ground-Dove, in which the abortion of unused wings had not 
extended to the degree manifested by the larger, heavier, and more sluggish form. 
In the articulated skeleton of the Dodo (Pls. I. and II.) I assign twelve vertebre to 
the cervical series, as in the restoration in pl. 15 of my original Memoir; and this is the 
estimate of the number of the cervical yertebra in Pezophaps to which Messrs. Newton 
are led after careful comparison and analysis of the “hundred and sixty-one vertebra ” 
of that extinet bird in their collection’, 
In the unlikely contingency of the disinterment of the bones of any individual Dodo 
or Solitaire which may have lain so undisturbed as to demonstrate the precise number 
of vertebre intervening between the skull and pelvis, the accuracy of our respective 
inductions as to the vertebral formula may be put beyond question. But should it 
prove that there have been one or two cervicals more or less than have been assigned 
to Lidus and to Pezophaps, the responsibility as to the former bird will rest with the 
author of the Memoir of 1866, and not with the artist, as to whose figure of the 
skeleton of Diduncwlus, in pl. 15 of that Memoir, I must observe that there are plainly 
twelve cervicals given, neither more nor less, succeeded by seven dorsals, of which the 
three confluent ones are the fourth, fifth, and sixth, as in Didus and Pezophaps. 
In the pelvis of the Dodo the pubis extends freely backward, with a curve convex 
outward and downward, and for an extent corresponding with the characters of the same 
bone in Pezophaps. (Compare Pls. I. and II. of the present * Supplement” with fig. 70, 
pl. 18, N., and the restoration im dotted outlines in fig. 179, pL 24, N.) Nevertheless 
a pelyis with the whole extent and entire lower border of the ischium seems still to be a 
desideratum in the collections of the bones of both Didus and Pezophaps which have 
as yet reaclied England. The better-preserved sacral elements of the pelvis permitted 
sixteen vertebre to be counted in that extensive anchylosed mass of bone-segments. 
Messrs. Newton state that one specimen of pelvis of Pezophaps, complete in its posterior 
half, * las eighteen coalesced sacral vertebra.” It is to be regretted that this specimen 
is not figured; the subjects, at least, of figs. 66, 68, 69, & 70, in their paper, are plainly 
d#>5) 
*N,, p. 338, “ N., p. 382, 
