177
PEZOPHAPSSTRICKLAND & MELVILLE.
Skull with a moderate rostrum, slightly hooked, and the nasal and maxillary processes of the praemaxillae diverging anteriorly; the frontal region flat with but little cancellous tissue. Coracoid stout. Manus armed with an ossified tuberosity. Neck and feet long. Delto-pectoral crest of humerus aborted.
This genus connects Didus with the Columbidae. The male is much larger than the female.
PEZOPHAPS SOLITARIUS(Gm.)
THE SOLITAIRE.
(Plate 23, 25a, Figs. 1, 2, 3.)
- Solitaire Leguat, Voy. deux iles désertes Ind. Or. I pp. 98. 102 (1708).
- Didus solitarius Gmelin, S. N. I p. 728, n. 2 (1788).
- Pezophaps solitaria Strickland, the Dodo, &c., p. 46 (1848).
- Didus nazarenus Bartl. (nec. Gmel.), P. Z. S. 1851, p. 284, pl. XLV.
- Pezophaps minor Strickland, Contr. to Orn. 1852, p. 19 (?).
This bird was first made known by Leguat in 1708, but some confusion seems to have arisen, owing to his applying the same name to them as the Sieur D.B. (Dubois) gave to the Bourbon Dodo in 1674. This is the original description:—
"The feathers of the males are of a brown-grey colour, the feet and beak are like a turkey's, but a little more crooked. They have scarce any tail, but their hind part covered with feathers is roundish, like the crupper of a hare. They are taller than turkeys. Their neck is straight, and a little longer in proportion than a turkey's when it lifts up his head. Its eye is black and lively, and its head without comb on cop. They never fly, their wings are too little to support the weight of their bodies; they serve only to beat themselves and flutter when they call one another. They will whirl about for twenty or thirty times together on the same side during the space of 4 or 5 minutes. The motions of their wings make then a noise very like that of a rattle, and one may hear it two hundred paces off. The bone of their
