1869/12/31 by Alfred F. Newton, Edward Newton · 6 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Lepidoptera: Biology and Taxonomy #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Yersinia bacterium, plague, ectoparasites research
paper · doi:10.1098/rstl.1869.0011
openalex publication_date 1869/12/31 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Abstract Evidence as to the fact of the island of Rodriguez in the Indian Ocean having been formerly inhabited by a Didine bird specifically distinct from the true Dodo of Mauritius ( Didus ineptus, Linn.) appears to have been first satisfactorily adduced in 1844 by the late Hugh Edwin Strickland. It is true that, eighty years ago, Gmelin, in his edition of the ‘Systema Naturæ’ of Linnæus (tom. i. p. 728), described in scientific language, from the account given by Leguat (with which he was apparently acquainted only at second hand through the intervention of Buffon), a second species of the genus Didus as inhabiting that island; but this species had been long rejected by all zoologists, except those whose labours had been confined to the work of compilation, until, as just mentioned, Strickland proved, from a renewed examination of the original and other accounts, that the species thus described, however it might have been misrepresented, had certainly once existed, and moreover that remains of it were contained in at least three collections—the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, the Andersonian Museum of Glasgow, and the collection of the Zoological Society of London. The opinion thus propounded was, four years later, set forth at greater length by its author, the subject of it being then declared not only specifically but generically distinct from Didus ineptus, and called Pezophaps solitaria (Gmel.), and since that time no one has ventured to impugn its accuracy. Thus, though formally accepting Gmelin as the first author who applied the set rules of zoological nomenclature to this species, little credit is really due to him from the fact. Leguat, in 1708, was its original describer, if he may not be called its discoverer; for we have no knowledge of any writer who had previously distinguished it from the better-known Dodo of Mauritius, and Strickland was the first naturalist who placed its former existence beyond all doubt.