"Though these birds will sometimes very familiarly come up near enough to
one, when we do not run after them, yet they will never grow tame, as soon
as they are caught they shed tears, without crying, and refuse all manner
of sustenance till they die.
When these birds build their nests, they choose a clean place, gather
together some palm leaves for that purpose, and heap them up a foot and a
half high from the ground, on which they sit. They never lay but one egg,
which is much bigger than that of a goose. The male and female both cover
it in their turns, and the young is not hatched till at 7 weeks end. All
the while they are sitting upon it, or are bringing up their young one,
which is not able to provide for itself in several months, they will not
suffer any other bird of their species to come within two hundred yards
round of the place. But what is very singular is, the males will never
drive away the females, only when they perceive one they make a noise with
their wings to call their own female--she drives away the unwelcome
stranger, not leaving it till it was without her bounds. The female does
the same as to males, which she leaves to the male who drives them away. We
have observed this several times, and I {179} affirm it to be true. The
combats between them on this occasion last sometimes pretty long, because
the stranger only turns about, and does not fly directly from the nest.
However, the others do not forsake it till they have quite driven it out of
their limits. After these birds have raised their young one, and left it to
itself, they are always together, which the other birds are not, and though
they happen to mingle with other birds of the same species, these two
companions never disunite.
We have often remarked, that some days after the young one leaves the nest,
a company of 30 or 40 bring another young one to it, and the new fledged
bird, joining the band with its father and mother, they march to some bye
place. We frequently followed them, and found that afterwards the old ones
went each their way alone, or in couples, and left the two young ones
together, which we called a marriage."
Leguat's, d'Heguerty's, and the Abbé Pingré's descriptions were all we had
of this great ground pigeon down to 1866, except a few bones. When Mr.
Strickland proved its distinctness from the Dodo of Mauritius in 1844, and
up to 1852, these bones numbered 18. In 1864 Mr. E. Newton and Captain
Barclay got 3 more bones, in 1865 Mr. Jenner, the resident magistrate,
collected 8 bones, and in 1866 nearly 2,000 bones were collected, but
during the Transit of Venus expedition in 1874, a thorough search was made,
and a number of complete skeletons was collected.
Habitat: Island of Rodriguez.
Represented in Museums by a number of complete skeletons and a large number
of bones.
Explanation of Plates.
_Plate 23._
Coloured drawing made from Leguat's description and figure.
_Plate 25 (a)._
_Fig. 1._ Outline of figure in Leguat's Voyage, 1708.
_Fig. 2._ Outline of Schlegel's reconstructed figure of the Solitaire,
1854.
_Fig. 3._ Outline of Solitaire in Frontispiece to Leguat's Voyage,
1708.
{181}