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Show 646 MR. CALDWELL ON THE ZOOLOGY OF RODRIGUEZ. [Dec. 7, It should be remarked that the ununited skeleton has not got the atlas bone. It was broken and so delicate, I did not dare to mount it. The sternum is very complete, the outline being perfect except on the right side, where the lateral process is broken off, though I am not yet sure I have not got the fragment put aside. The furcula is unbroken, and very small when compared with the size of the bird. The head is very complete in every respect, and the cervical and dorsal vertebrae, on the whole remarkably well preserved, as are also the wing- and leg-bones : tbe feet are quite complete. A second skeleton of a male(?) bird is far from being so perfect as the one just described, but still will make a capital specimen. One side of the sternum is complete, the head very nearly so; but the pelvis is somewhat damaged, though one of the pubic bones is in place. The vertebrse of the neck are not in such good order as in the other one. I do not know whether the naturalists inquired into tbe probable means of existence of the Solitaire. To one of local experience the merest view of the ground would suggest that they lived in the midst of abundance of food, and that their extinction cannot be ascribed to deficiency of nourishment, nor to human agency, as the population was too sparse, and the place where their remains are now found too remote to be more than occasionally hunted; and it is well established that it is only very lately that many of the caverns in which these remains have been found have been discovered. Neither can it be granted that the bones were washed into the caverns and thus buried in the floors, though doubtless such was the case in some instances, especially in some of those explored by Mr. Slater. The cave which I explored was in a sort of cliff, and the entrance about eight feet above the bed of the ravine, which ultimately became a cavern ; and there were no marks whatever of any action of water beyond the filtration from the roof in a few spots. I can only gather therefore that these birds resorted to these caves in considerable numbers and appear to have frequented them, although this hypothesis is opposed to Leguat's statement, as be expressly mentions that the birds were not gregarious, but solitary. The hypothesis that they got into the caves to avoid fires is equally untenable. Fire could not take place in this coral country, as there is no grass to propagate it, and the trees are very wide apart. Messrs. Newton's theory of swine having destroyed them is equally, in my view, erroneous; pigs would get nothing to eat, nor water to drink, and would scarcely leave the ravines far away from this spot, where abundance of guava, raspberries, Colocasia-roots, and other succulent food in which they delight exist, and where they could (as at present) wallow in the muddy pools. I can only attribute their apparently sudden and simultaneous disappearance to some terrible hurricane or other disturbing cause which led them to these places for shelter ; for they are found in many places where no bird deprived of the faculty of flight, and with any instinct, would resort to, viz. withdrawn into nooks, crannies, and fissures whence they could, in many instances, scarcely get |