. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. C. T. Fisher & F E. Warr 158 Bull. 2003 123A. years, so he obviously thought it was special. It may have been of the live specimen he had in confinement in Cambridge, in which case the painting was probably done from life. This Cambridge bird is now in the collections of the NHM at Tring. Figure 20. Lord Howe Island Pigeon, by George Raper (1790), from the Raper Drawings at the Natural History Museum (© The Natural History Museum, London). Illustrations of unknown species, 1: the Tahiti Black Rail An original watercolour (now in privat
. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. C. T. Fisher & F E. Warr 158 Bull. 2003 123A. years, so he obviously thought it was special. It may have been of the live specimen he had in confinement in Cambridge, in which case the painting was probably done from life. This Cambridge bird is now in the collections of the NHM at Tring. Figure 20. Lord Howe Island Pigeon, by George Raper (1790), from the Raper Drawings at the Natural History Museum (© The Natural History Museum, London). Illustrations of unknown species, 1: the Tahiti Black Rail An original watercolour (now in private hands17) of a rail named Rallus nigra was published in 1784 in Icones animalium by the artist John Miller, but without locality. It was therefore supposed to be either a picture of the Henderson Island Rail Porzana atra CNesophylax ater ; as synonomised in Peters 1934,2: 188), or an earlier version of George Forster's picture of Porzana tabuensis (which is from Tahiti and neighbouring islands). Thus it was recommended that the name Rallus nigra be suppressed. However, the original watercolour is clearly marked 'Otheila (= Tahiti). Dr Forster' (Fig. 19) and the bird does not look like Porzana tabuensis. Michael Walters of NHM (who has been analysing this picture) thinks that Rallus nigra was probably more closely related to P. atra but was a distinct species that once lived on Tahiti. It would be useful to discover some fossils to prove this theory. Illustrations of unknown species, 2: the Lord Howe Island Pigeon There are only two known portraits of the Lord Howe Island Pigeon Janthoenas godmani. One is amongst the collection of George Raper's drawings in the NHM18 and is dated 1790. The other (which is almost identical and is probably a copy of Raper's picture, although the bird is sitting on the ground rather than perched on a branch) is amongst an important collection of paintings19 produced by an unknown artist in about 1790. This latter picture is reproduced in Hindwood
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