_Fig. 4._ Outline of Dr. H. Schlegel's reconstruction of the Réunion Dodo. _Plate 25 (b)._ Drawing from description of the Sieur D.B. (Dubois), 1674. {177} PEZOPHAPS STRICKLAND & 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 {178} wings grows greater towards the extremity, and forms a little round mass under the feathers as big as a musket ball. That and its beak are the chief defences of this bird. 'Tis very hard to catch in the woods, but easy in open places, because we run faster than they, and sometimes we approach them without much trouble. From March to September they are very fat, and taste admirably well, especially while they are young, some of the males weigh 45 pounds. The females are wonderfully beautiful, some fair, some brown. I call them fair, because they are the colour of fair hair; they have a sort of peak like a widow's, upon their breasts, which is of a dun colour. No one feather is straggling from the other all over their