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Show 1S/9.J PROF. NEWTON ON ALECTORCENAS NITIDISSIMA. 3 fute the numerous fictions that have been heaped upon the only available facts. The bird was sufficiently well described and figured by Sonnerat in his ' Voyage aux Indes orientales ' (ii. p. 175, pi. 101) as coming from the lie de France, and was named by him the Pigeon hollandais-a name given, I suspect, not so much from the former inhabitants of the island, as from its plumage exhibiting the colours of the Dutch flag (red, blue, and white). Two examples obtained by him found their way to the Museum of Paris, where Temminck (Hist. Pig. ed. 2, i. p. 50, pi. 19) seems to have seen them at the beginning of the present century, their plumage very much the worse, he says, for the fumes (of sulphuric acid, as M . Alphonse Milne- Edwards informs me) to which they had been exposed. In 1790, Bonnaterre, describing the species afresh, but apparently from the same specimens, said of it (Encycl. Meth. p. 233), and probably with truth:-' O n le trouve frequemment a File de France.' In or about 1816 the University of Edinburgh became possessed of what has long been known as the 'Dufresne Collection,' from the French naturalist of that name, who was originally (as 1 learn from M. A. Milne-Edwards) a dealer in Natural-History specimens, and had also been for some time Conservator of the Cabinet of Natural History belonging to the Empress Josephine, but in 1815 or the following year entered the Museum of Paris as Aide-Naturaliste. In which capacity it was that he parted with the collection obtained by the University of Edinburgh I cannot say ; but that collection contained the specimen of this Pigeon, now before you, as the label affixed to it shows' ; and it remained the property of the University until a few years ago, when it was transferred to the newly established Museum of Science and Art at Edinburgh. This brings me to the end of my facts. " It is a very unpleasmg task to expose the blunders of other naturalists; but I am sorry to say that few authors subsequent to Sonnerat and Bonnaterre have referred to this species without making some mistake about it. In one very conspicuous case this mistake can scarcely have been otherwise than intentional. The misstatements of Le Vaillant are notorious ; but I do not know a more unblushing instance of his mendacity than his circumstantial account of the Ramier herisse, as he called this species (Ois. d'Afr. vi. p. 74). It naturally misled all succeeding authors, until his assertions respecting this bird were concisely summed up by Sundevall (Krit. Framstalln. p. 53) in the sentence ' quae omnia inter fabulas numeranda sunt.' But Sundevall did not seem to have suspected that the species was extinct; nor perhaps had any one else, until Mr. Edward Newton, during his residence in Mauritius between 1859 and 1878, became convinced that such was the case. He indeed once hoped (Ibis, 1861, p. 277) that he had heard of it; but further inquiry proved the bird meant by his informant to be Trocaza megeri; and the only trace of 1 "The inscription, as I copied it at the time, ran :- 'The Hackled Pigeon. Ptilinopus nitidissimus, Scop. sp. Loealitj' Isle of France. Columba Francice Dufresne.' On the bottom of the stand was written, K-d Hackled Pigeon, 219, Columba Francia Linn.' " 1* |