46 
The Solitaires were found living in great numbers by the colony of Huguenots who 
settled in the island of Rodriguez, under their leader M. Francois Leguat, in 1691. 
Pezophaps, according to the testimony of Leguat, lays but one egg at the breeding- 
season; and the same was probably the case with Didus, as it is with the existing 
species of fruit-eating doves (Carpophaga) and the passenger pigeons (Lctopistes). 
The Moas appear to have been similarly restricted, as their living representatives, the 
Kivis, also are, in the number of the eggs of each brood. 
The condition of the existence of Pezophaps, and probably that of its flightless 
structure, was the absence of any extirpating enemy in the island to which the species 
was restricted. Feeding on the date, the plantain, and other tropical products of a rich 
vegetation encumbering the soil when ripe and fallen, their flesh was sapid as well as 
nutritious ; and the early Huguenot colonists commenced the work of extirpation, which 
their successors and the quadrupeds (cats and pigs) which they introduced completed. 
In assigning the origin of the species Pezophaps solitaria to the operation of a 
primary law, by way of direct creation of a primitive pair, the osseous tumour on the 
wrist of the male, and the fore pair of limbs in both sexes, framed on a pattern fitting 
them to exercise the faculty of flight and for no other kind of locomotion on land, but 
of too small a size for that end, are among the incidents of this “thaumatogeny,” or 
inconceivable mode of genesis, 
The other alternative is a reference of the species to the operation of a secondary law, 
by no means implying disbelief in, or involving denial of, the Lawgiver. In specu- 
lating on the mode of operation of such law, the following facts present themselves :— 
Pezophaps solitaria was the largest kind of land-bird observed by the first settlers in 
the island of Rodriguez. 
It differed in no other respect from the class-characters of the other birds of that 
island save in the inability to fly by the action of its wings. 
There were no enemies native to the island able to take advantage of that. dis- 
ablement. 
“ll ne sy trouve aucun animal a quatre pieds, que des rats, des lézards, & des 
tortues de terre, desquelles y a trois différentes espéces,” writes Leguat in his interesting 
little book '. 
The Solitaires had no call for practising or endeavouring to effect that hardest and 
most strenuous mode of locomotion to obtain sustenance or fulfil any of the conditions 
of preservation of the individual or of the species; they were never scared into such 
ylolent exercise. 
' Voyage et Avantures de Francois Leguat, & de ses Compagnons, en deux isles désertes des Indes Orien- 
tales. Avee la relation des choses les plus remarquables qu’ils ont observées dans Isle Maurice, & Batavia, au 
Cap de Bonne-Espérance, dans l'Isle St.-Héléne, & en d'autres endroits de leur Route. Le tout enriché de 
Cartes & de Figures. Tome Premier & Tome Second (12mo), A Londres, chez David Mortier, Marchand 
Libraire. 1708. 
