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Show 1873.] LETTER FROM DR. JOHN KIRK. 195 (ii. p. 72), of the bird he calls the ' Geant.' On comparison it was obvious that one figure must have been copied from the other: the only question was, which was the original ? This I was soon able to decide. The print bears at bottom the words ' Adr. Collaert fecit' and * Th. Galle excud.' Now, referring in the British Museum to a copy of Collaert's ' Avium vivae Icones,' I found m y possession to be a detached leaf from that work, which is commonly supposed to have been published at Antwerp about the year 1580; while Leguat's first edition appeared in 1708, he having only seen the bird in 1694. In Nagler's ' Kunst-Lexicon' (iii. p. 45) it is stated that Adrian Collaert was born in 1520, and died in 1567. Th. Galle is said by the same authority (iv. p. 566) to have been born in 1560. The print in the British Museum copy (436. b. 24) differs from m y own in that the lettering runs • Adr. Collaert excud.,' no mention being made of Galle. The full title of the work seems to be 'Avium vivse icones, in ses incisse & editee ab Adriano Collardo,' without date or place of publication; and the Museum copy bears besides the manuscript title 'Octavius Pisani recensuit.' It follows, therefore, that the figure given by Leguat is not original. "But there is another matter worthy of remark. Collaert's print contains a second and, in some respects, a more satisfactory figure of the same bird, from which its Ralline affinities are made pretty plain. N o w it will be recollected that in 1857 Prof. Schlegel contributed to the Academy of Sciences at Amsterdam a paper on the ' Geant' and other extinct birds of the Mascarene Islands*, of which paper an English translation has appeared f. Herein he declared his opinion that this bird must have been a huge Water-hen, and called it Gallinula (Leguatia) gigantea. I need only say that, so far, I quite agree with him; indeed, if he had already seen this second figure of Collaert's, he could not better have interpreted the characters of the ruder drawing. "I ought to say that the authority of Leguat's print of the ' Solitaire' (Pezophaps solitaria), so well known from Strickland's reproduction of it, is not necessarily impaired by the discovery that the portrait of the 'Geant'has been taken from the'Auis Indica;' and I m a y also remark that though the proportion observable between this last and two of the other figures (called 'Turma anser,' and obviously of the species now known as CEdemia perspicillata) in the print confirms Prof. Schlegel's estimate of the size of the extinct giant, yet too much reliance must not be placed on that fact, since, on examining the rest of Collaert's work, I find that the relative proportion of the figures in his prints is frequently disregarded." The Secretary read some extracts from a letter addressed to him by Dr. John Kirk, C.M.Z.S., H . M . Consul at Zanzibar. Dr. Kirk stated that he had a living female Koodoo (Tragelaphus strepsiceros?) from the Brava coast, which was much smaller than the South- African species, and which he suspected would prove to be different. * Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen. Afdeeling Natuurkunde, vii.~p. 116. t Ibis, 1866, p. 146. 13* |