of the Dodo in that island, I obtained only the following partly negative statement:

"That there is a very general impression among the inhabitants that the Dodo did exist at Rodriguez, as well as in the Mauritius itself; but that the oldest inhabitants have never seen it, nor has the bird or any part of it been preserved in any museum or collection formed in those islands, although some distinguished amateurs in natural history have passed their lives on them, and formed extensive collections. And with regard to the supposed existence of the Dodo in Madagascar, although Mr. Telfair had not received, at the time of his writing to Europe, a reply to a letter on the subject which he had addressed to a gentleman resident on that island, yet he stated that he had not any great expectations from that quarter; as the Dodo was not mentioned in any of his voluminous manuscripts respecting that island, which contained the travels of persons who had traversed Madagascar in all directions, many of them having no other object in view than that of extending the bounds of natural history.'

We close this part of the case with the evidence of one evidently well qualified to judge, and whose veracity there is no reason to doubt. If this evidence be, as we believe it to be, unimpeachable, it

the keeper was questioned therein yet I am confident that afterwards shee cast them all agayne." *

Since the foregoing history was recorded in the 'Penny Cyclopædia,' the late Mr. Hugh Edwin Strickland, whose early loss by a melancholy accident the world of science has to deplore, has published a work on the Dodo and its kindred, in which he has most diligently retraced the ground previously gone over by Mr. Broderip. With regard to the statement of L'Estrange, Mr. Strickland says:-"I have endeavoured to find some confirmation from contemporary authorities of this very interesting statement, but hitherto without success. The middle of the 17th century was most prolific in pamphlets, newspapers, broadsides, rows of dumpy quartos,' and literary rubbish mountains,' as Mr. Carlyle designates them; but the political storms of that period rendered men blind to the beauties and deaf to the harmonies of nature, and its literature is very barren in physical research."

In addition to the works quoted in which reference is made to the Dodo, Mr. Strickland gives the following:

Cornelius Matelief, a Dutch admiral, arrived in the Mauritius in 1606, and in a journal published in Dutch, and translated into French, gives an account of the Dodo, which he calls Dod-aersen, or Dronten.

is clear, not only that the Dodo existed, but that it was publicly exhibited in London. The lacunæ in the print represent the spaces occasioned by a hole burnt in the manuscript.

In Sloane Manuscript (No. 1839, 5, p. 108, Brit. Mus.) is the following interesting account by L'Estrange, in his observations on Sir Thomas Browne's 'Vulgar Errors.' It is worthy of note that the paragraph immediately follows one on the 'Estridge' (Ostrich) :"About 1638, as I walked London streets I saw the picture of a strange fowl hong out upon.a cloth vas and myselfe with one or two more Gen. in company went in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and was a great fowle somewhat bigger than the largest Turkey Cock and so legged and footed but stouter and thicker and of a, more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of a yong Cock Fesan (pheasant), and on the back of dunn or deare coulour. The keeper called it a Dodo and in the ende of a chimney in the chamber there lay an heap of large pebble stones whereof hee gave it many in our sight, some as bigg as nutmegs, and the keeper told us shee eats them conducing to digestion, and though I remember not how farre

In 1607 two ships, under the command of Van der Haagen, stayed some weeks in the Mauritius. "A journal was published in Dutch of this voyage, and translated in the Recueil des Voyages de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales,' Rouen, 1725.

Admiral Peter Wilhelm Verhuffen touched at Mauritius in 1611, and in 1613 an account of this voyage was published at Frankfurt, entitled 'Eyllffter Schiffart ander Theil,' &c., in which reference is made to the Dodo, and especially to the fact that it attacked its aggressors, and wounded them severely if they were not careful.

In a journal by Peter van der Broecke, in which allusion is made to a visit to the Mauritius in 1617, Mr. Strickland discovered the sketch of a Dodo, but found no reference to it in the letter-press. In a work published by François Cauche at Paris in 1651, entitled Relations veritables et curieuses de l'Isle de Madagascar,' he describes birds called Oiseaux de Nazaret, which answer to the Dodo. He'says they lay but one egg the size of a halfpenny roll. How he came to

*This curious statement is extracted in the modern edition of Sir Thomas Browne's works by Wilkins: published by Pickering.

call the Dodo by this name, and what the size of a halfpenny roll was in 1651 are difficulties.

There is a tract in the Ashmolean Museum of which there are two editions, the first without a date, the second printed in London 1665. It is a catalogue of rarities to be seen at the musique house at the west end of Paules,' by R. H. alias Forges, Gentleman. Here at p. 11 we find "A Dodo's Leg; it is a bird that cannot fly." This is probably the specimen that passed into the possession of the Royal Society, and was described by Grew.

The last of Mr. Strickland's additions is a manuscript, entitled 'A coppey of Mr. Benj. Harry's Journall when he was chief mate of the Shippe Berkley Castle, Captn. Wm. Talbot then Commander on a voyage to the Coste and Bay, 1679, which voyage they wintered at the Maurisshes.' He speaks of the "Dodos, whose flesh is very hard."

This seems to be the last notice of the Dodo. "That the destruction of the Dodos," says Mr. Strickland, " was completed by 1693 may be inferred from the narrative of Leguat, who in that year remained several months in Mauritius, and enumerates its animal productions at some length, but makes no mention whatever of Dodos."

M. de Blainville says that at a public dinner at the Mauritius in 1816 several persons were present from 70 to 90 years old, who had no knowledge of such a bird from recollection or tradition. Mr. J. V. Thompson also, who resided for some years in Mauritius and Madagascar previous to 1816, states that no more traces of the existence of the Dodo could then be found than of the truth of the tale of Paul and Virginia, although a very general idea prevailed as to the reality of both.

Since the publication of the Penny Cyclopædia' the pictorial evidence of the existence and characters of this bird has also increased. In the royal collection of the Hague is a painting by Roland Savery, which is regarded as one of that master's chef d'oeuvres. It represents Orpheus charming the animal creation with his music, and among innumerable birds and beasts the clumsy Dodo is represented as spell-bound by the lyric bard. This bird was discovered in this picture by Professor Owen in 1838.

"Whilst at the Hague," writes the professor to Mr. Broderip, "in the summer of 1838, I was much struck with the minuteness and accuracy with which the exotic species of animals had been painted by Savery and Breughel in such subjects as Paradise, Orpheus charming the Beasts, &c., in which scope was allowed for grouping together a great variety of animals. Understanding that the celebrated menagerie of Prince Maurice had afforded the living models to these artists, I sat down one day before Savery's Orpheus and the Beasts, to make a list of the species which the picture sufficiently evinced that the artist had had the opportunity to study alive. Judge of my surprise and pleasure in detecting in a dark corner of the picture (which is badly hung between two windows) the Dodo, beautifully finished, showing for example, though but three inches long, the auricular circle of feathers, the scutation of the tarsi, and the loose structure of the caudal plumes. In the number and proportions of the toes, and in general form, it accords with Edwards's oil painting in the British Museum; and I conclude that the miniature must have been copied from the study of a living bird, which it is most probable formed part of the Mauritian menagerie. "The bird is standing in profile, with a lizard at its feet. Not any of the Dutch naturalists to whom I applied for information respecting the picture, the artist, and his subjects, seemed to be aware of the existence of this evidence of the Dodo in the Hague collection.

"I think I told you that my friend Professor Eschricht of Copen hagen had written to inform me that the skull of a Dodo had been lately discovered in the museum at Copenhagen: it had before formed part of the museum of the Duke of Gottorp."

In 1845 Mr. Strickland was examining Roland Savery's paintings at Berlin. "Among them," he says, "I found one which represents numerous animals in Paradise, one of which is a Dodo of about the same size and in nearly the same attitude as the one last mentioned. This picture was painted in 1626. Another picture of the Dodo, also by Roland Savery, date 1628, exists in the imperial collection of the Bellvedere at Vienna. The attitude is very different from that in the other pictures, giving the impression that Savery must have studied this bird from living specimens, and probably the one exhibited in London sat to Savery for his portraits."

The only existing recent remains attributed to the Dodo are-a leg in the British Museum, and a head (a cast of which is in Brit. Mus.), and a leg in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, the relics of Tradescant's bird, and the head referred to by Professor Owen. Whether the leg formerly in the museum of Pauw be that at present in the British Museum may be perhaps doubtful, though we think with Dr. Gray that they are probably identical; but that the specimen in the British Museum did not belong to Tradeccant's specimen is clear, for it existed in the collection belonging to the Royal Society when Tradescant's 'Dodar' was complete. In the Annales des Sciences' (tom. xxi. p. 103, Sept. 1830) will be found an account of an assemblage of fossil bones, then recently discovered under a bed of lava in the Isle of France (Mauritius), and sent to the Paris Museum. They almost all belonged to a large living species of land-tortoise, called Testudo

Indica,' but amongst them were the head, sternum, and humerus of the Dodo. "M. Cuvier," adds Sir Charles Lyell in his 'Principles of Geology,' "showed me these valuable remains at Paris, and assured me that they left no doubt in his mind that the huge bird was one of the gallinaceous tribe."

Head of Dodo (from cast of Oxford specimen).

Foot of Dodo (specimen in the British Museum). "Let us now endeavour," says Mr. Strickland, "to combine into one view the results of the historical, pictorial, and anatomical data which we possess respecting the Dodo.

"We must figure it to ourselves as a massive clumsy bird, ungraceful in its form, and with a slow waddling motion. We cannot form a better idea of it than by imagining a young duck or gosling enlarged to the dimensions of a swan. It affords one of those cases, of which we have many examples in zoology, where a species, or a part of the organs in a species, remains permanently undeveloped or in an infantine state. Such a condition has reference to peculiarities in the mode of life of the animal, which render certain organs unnecessary; and they therefore are retained through life in an imperfect state, instead of attaining that fully-developed condition which marks the mature age of the generality of animals. The Greenland Whale, for instance, may be called a permanent suckling; having no occasion for teeth the teeth [never penetrate the gums, though in youth they are distinctly traceable in the dental groove of the jaws. The Proteus again is a permanent tadpole, destined to inhabit the waters which fill subterranean caverns; the gills which in other batrachian reptiles are cast off as the animal approaches maturity are here retained through life, while the eyes are mere subcutaneous specks, incapable of contributing to the sense of vision. And, lastly (not to multiply examples), the Dodo is (or rather was) a permanent nestling, clothed with down instead of feathers, and with the wings and tail so short and feeble as to be utterly unsubservient to flight. It may appear at first sight difficult to account for the presence of organs which are practically useless. Why, it may be asked, does the whale possess the germs of teeth which are never used for mastication? Why has the proteus eyes, when he is especially created to dwell in darkness? and why was the dodo endowed with wings at all, when those wings were useless for locomotion? This question is too wide and too deep to plunge into at present. I will merely observe that these apparently anomalous facts are really the indications of laws which the Creator has been pleased to follow in the construction of organised beings. They are inscriptions in an unknown hieroglyphic, which we are quite sure mean something, but of which we have scarcely begun to master the alphabet. There appear however reasonable grounds for believing that the Creator has assigned to each class of animals a definite type, or structure, from which he has never departed, even in the most exceptional or eccentric modifications of form. Thus if we suppose, for instance, that the abstract idea of a mammal implied the presence of wings, we may then comprehend why in the whale, the proteus, and the dodo, these organs are merely suppressed, and not wholly annihilated. And let us beware of attributing anything like imperfection to these anomalous organisms, however deficient they may be in those complicated structures which we so much admire in other creatures. Each animal and plant has received its peculiar organisation for the purpose, not of exciting the admiration of other beings, but of sustaining its own existence. Its perfection therefore consists, not in the number or complication of its organs, but in the adaptation of its whole structure to the external circumstances in which it is destined to live, and in this point of view we shall find that every department of the organic creation is equally perfect; the humblest animalcule, or the simplest Conferva, being as completely organised with reference to its appropriate habitat and its destined functions

as man himself, who claims to be lord of all. Such a view of the creation is surely more philosophical than the crude and profane idea entertained by Buffon and his disciples, one of whom calls the dodo 'un oiseau bizarre, dont toutes les parties portaient le caractère d'une conception manquée.' He fancies that this imperfection was the result of the youthful impatience of the newly-formed volcanic islands which gave birth to the dodo, and implies that a steady old continent would have produced a much better article."

We now pass to the consideration of the place this apparently anomalous bird ought to occupy in the systems of classification of zoologists.

Piso, in his edition of Bontius, places the Dodo immediately before the Cassowary; and here we may observe that the figure of Bontius does not appear to be identical with the picture which now hangs in the British Museum. Though there is a general resemblance there are particular differences which go far to show, at all events, that the figure of Bontius and that in the picture are different portraits. Willughby's eighth chapter treats of 'The greatest land-birds, of a peculiar kind by themselves, which by reason of the bulk of their bodies and the smallness of their wings cannot fly, but only walk.' The Ostrich occupies the first section of this chapter, and the Dodo the fourth and last, being immediately preceded by the Cassowary or Emeu. Ray's section Aves rostris rectioribus minusque hamatis maximæ, singulares et sui generis, ob corporum molem et alarum brevitatem volandi impotes' contains the same birds as Willughby's eighth chapter, namely, the Ostrich, the American Ostrich, the Emeu, Eme, or Cassowary, and lastly the Dodo.

Moehring, and after him Brisson, gives the bird under the name of Raphus a position next to the Ostriches also.

Buffon places it independently.

Linnæus, in his last edition of the 'Systema Nature' (the 12th, 1766), places the bird at the head of his Gallina, the order immediately succeeding the Gralle, under the name of Didus ineptus, and immediately before the genus Pavo (Peacocks). The genus Struthio is the last of his Gralla, and Rhea (American Ostrich) the last species of Struthio, so that Didus ineptus stands between Struthio Rhea, Linn., and Pavo cristatus (the Peacock). In a former edition Linnæus had noticed the bird under the name Struthio cucullatus.

Latham in his synopsis (1782) followed Linnæus, but gave three species namely, the Hooded Dodo, the Solitary Dodo, and the Nazarene Dodo.

Gmelin, in his edition of the 'Systema Naturæ' (1789), makes Psophia (Trumpeter) the last genus of the Linnæan Gralla, and Otis (Bustard) the first genus of the Linnæan Gallina, under which lastmentioned order he arranges the genus Didus, placing it between the genera Struthio and Pavo, which are both included by Gmelin in the order Gallina. He also gives three species-1st, Didus ineptus, which he describes as "black, clouded with white, with tetradactyle feet." The following are his synonyms:-Didus, 'Syst. Nat.' xii. 1, p. 267, n. 1; Struthio cucullatus, 'Syst. Nat.' x. p. 155; Raphus, Briss. 'Av.' 5, p. 14, n. 1; Cygnus cucullatus, Nieremb. Nat.' 231; Gallus gallinaceus peregrinus, Clus. Exot.' 99, t. 10; Olear. Mus.' 23, t. 13, f. 5; Dronte, Bont. 'Jav.' 70; Buff. 'Hist. Nat. des Ois.' i. p. 480; Dod-aersen, or Valgh-Vogel, Herbert, it. p. 382, t. 383; Dodo, Raj. 'Av.' p. 37, n. 8; Will. Orn.' p. 153, t. 27; Edw. 'Glean.' t. 294; Hooded Dodo, Lath. 'Syn.' iii. 1, p. 1, t. 70. 2nd, Didus solitarius, Solitaire, Buff. Hist. Nat. des Ois.' i. p. 485; Leguat, it. i. p. 98; Solitary Dodo, Lath. 'Syn.' iii. 1, p. 3, n. 2. This species is described by Gmelin as "varied with gray and brown, with tetradactyle feet." 3rd, Didus Nazarenus, Oiseau de Nazareth, et Oiseau de Nausée, Buff. Hist. Nat. des Ois.' i. p. 485; Cauche, 'Madag.' p. 130; Nazarene Dodo, Lath. Syn.' iii. 1, p. 4, n. 3. Gmelin describes this species as "black, with tetradactyle feet."

Blumenbach followed Linnæus; and Duméril and Vieillot followed Latham.

Temminck instituted in his 'Analyse du Système Général d'Ornithologie' the order Inertes for the Dodo and the Apteryx; two birds, as Mr. Yarrell in his paper on the Apteryx (Trans. Zool. Soc.' vol. i. p. 71) observes, differing decidedly from each other in their beaks; but in reference to their imperfect wings, as also in the nature of their external covering, having obvious relation to the species included in his order Cursores. "But," adds Mr. Yarrell, "the situation chosen for this order Inertes, at the extreme end of his systematic arrangement, leads me to infer that M. Temminck considered as imaginary the subjects for which it was formed."

Illiger, in his 'Prodromus' (1811), instituted the order Inepti for the reception of the Dodo alone, Apteryx not being then known, and he placed it immediately preceding his Cursores, containing the Struthious Birds.

Cuvier, in the first edition of his 'Règne Animal,' at the end of his notice on his family Brevipennes (Les Autruches, Struthio, Linn.), has the following note appended to his description of the last species, Rhea :--"I cannot place in this table species but badly known, or, more, so little authentic as those which compose the genus Didus. The first, or the Dronte (Didus ineptus), is only known from a description given by the first Dutch navigators, and preserved by Clusius, 'Exot. p. 99, and by an oil-painting of the same epoch copied by Edwards, pl. 294; for the description of Herbert is puerile, and all

the others are copied from Clusius and Edwards. It would seem that the species has entirely disappeared, and we now possess no more of it at the present day than a foot preserved in the British Museum (Shaw, Nat. Miscell. pl. 143), and a head in bad condition in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. The bill does not seem to be without some relation to that of the Auks (Pingouins), and the foot would bear considerable resemblance to that of the Penguins (Manchots) if it were palmated. The second species, or the Solitaire (Didus solitarius), rests only on the testimony of Leguat, ‘Voy.' i. p. 98, a man who has disfigured the best known animals, such as the Hippopotamus and Lamantin. Finally, the third species, or L'Oiseau de Nazare (Didus Nazarenus), is only known through François Cauche, who regards it as the same as the Dronte, and yet only gives it three toes, while all other authors give four to the Dronte. No one has been able to see any of these birds since these voyagers." Cuvier's opinions subsequently underwent considerable modification. When he was in this country he had an opportunity of seeing the head preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, and the foot in the British Museum, and he doubted the identity of this species with that of which the painting is preserved in the national collection. Lyell mentions these doubts, and we must here recall to the reader the geologist's statement above alluded to, that Cuvier showed him the valuable remains in Paris, and that he assured him that they left no doubt on his mind that the huge bird was one of the Gallinaceous tribe. (Sur quelques Ossemens,' &c., 'Ann. des Sci.' tome xxi. p. 103, Sept. 1830.)

Shaw, as appears indeed from Cuvier's note, made mention of the Dodo in his 'Naturalist's Miscellany' (plates 142 and 143), giving a figure of the head preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, and in his 'Zoological Lectures.'

Mr. Vigors in his paper On the Natural Affinities that connect the Orders and Families of Birds' ('Linn. Trans.' vol. xiv.) thus writes on the subject of the Dodo:-"The bird in question, from every account which we have of its economy, and from the appearance of its head and foot, is decidedly gallinaceous; and, from the insufficiency of its wings for the purposes of flight, it may with equal certainty be pronounced to be of the Struthious structure, and referable to the present family. But the foot has a strong hind toe, and, with the exception of its being more robust, in which character it still adheres to the Struthionida, it corresponds exactly with the foot of the Linnæan genus Crax, that commences the succeeding family." M. Lesson, in his 'Manual' (1828), after giving a description of the Dodo (genus Dronte, Didus, Linn., Raphus, Moehring, Brisson), says that the genus includes but one species which may be considered as at all authenticated, and which exists no longer; this is the Dronte, Didus ineptus, described by Clusius, ex. p. 99, figured by Edwards, pl. 294. "They possess," he adds, "a foot and head of it at London, figured in Shaw's 'Miscell.' pl. 143 and 166." Then comes the following statement:-"M. Temminck has adopted, after Shaw, the genus Apteryx, which he thus describes." M. Lesson, after giving the description and noticing the only known species, Apteryx Australis, proceeds to make the following queries: "May not the Dronte be the Cassowary of the East Indies, to which has been added the bill of an Albatross? It is said that it was once very common in the Isles of France and of Bourbon, and that the former received the name of the Isle of Cerne from these birds. May not the Apteryx of M. Temminck be founded on the fragments of the Dronte preserved in the Museum of London?" To make the confusion complete, M. Lesson places immediately before the genus Dronte the Emou Kivikivi, Dromiceius Nova Zelandia, Less., which is no other than the Apteryx Australis of Shaw, and which has been so well described and figured by Mr. Yarrell in the first volume of the 'Transactions of the Zoological Society of London.'

M. de Blainville, in a memoir on the 'Didus ineptus,' read before the Academy of Sciences, on the 30th of August, 1830, and published in the Nouvelles Annales du Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle' (tome iv. p. 1, 4to., Paris, 1835), enters at large into the history of the bird. After giving the different points on which the claim of the Dodo to be considered a gallinaceous bird rests, and the reasons for and against it, he thus proceeds :-"Among the orders of birds which include the largest species, there only remain the birds of prey with which the Dodo can be compared; and it seems to us that it is to them that the bird bears the greatest resemblance." In proof of this it is necessary to attend to the following observations:

1. The eyes are situated in the same part of the bill as in Cathartes. 2. The nostrils are oval, situated very forward, and without a superior scale, as in those birds.

3. The form of the skull, its great width in the interorbitary space, and its flatness at the sinciput, are also nearly the same as in those vultures.

4. Even the colour of the bill, and the two caruncular folds of the origin of the curved part, are nearly the same as in those birds. 5. The species of hood which the skin forms at the root of the bill, and which have earned for the Dodo the name of Cygnus cucullatus, has a very similar disposition in Cathartes.

6. The almost entire nudity of the neck, as well as its greenish colour seen through the few downy feathers which cover it, are also characteristic of the vulture.

7. The form, the number, and the disposition of the toes, as well as the force and curvature of the claws, indicate a bird of that family at least as much as a Gallinaceous Bird.

8. The scaly system of the tarsi and of the toes more resembles also what is found in Cathartes than what is observed in the Gallinaceous Birds.

9. The kind of Jabot at the root of the neck, and even the muscular stomach, are found in one order as well as in the other.

10. Lastly, M. de Blainville notices the absence of the spur (l'ergot), which he remarks is nearly characteristic of the Gallinaceous Birds.

M. de Blainville, after expressing a hope that both the Aye-Aye (Cheiromys, which has not been seen a second time since the days of Sonnerat) and the Dodo may be yet recovered in the interior of Madagascar, thus concludes his memoir :

"1. There exist in the English collections traces of at least three individuals of a large species of walking bird (oiseau marcheur), to which has been given the name of Dodo, Dronte, Didus ineptus.

"2. These traces exist in Europe since the epoch when the Dutch began to take part in the discovery of the passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, that is to say, about 1594.

"3. The name of Dodo is employed for the first time by Herbert, that of Dronte by Piso, but without its being possible to arrive at the origin and etymology of these denominations.

"4. The country of this bird is the Isle of France; there being nothing to prove positively that it has been found either at Bourbon or at Fernandez, as has been thought, owing to the confusion, no doubt, between the Dodo and Solitaire of Leguat.

"5. The Dronte should be approximated to or even placed in the order of Rapacious Birds, near the vultures, rather than in that of the Gallinaceous Birds; and, for stronger reasons, rather than among the Grallatores (Echassiers), or near the Penguins (Manchots).

"6. It is by no means certain that this bird has disappeared from the number of living animals. If this is possible in the case of the Isle of France, it is not probable in the case of Madagascar, the productions of which are so little known, and which belongs, up to a certain point, to the same archipelago.

"There remains another question to discuss, namely, whether the incrusted bones which have been lately sent to M. Cuvier from the Isle of France really belonged to the Dodo, as M. Cuvier was led to believe. It is a question which would be most easily solved by the immediate comparison of these bones with the pieces preserved in England. If this was so, which the difference of height in the tarsal bone does not permit us to believe, it would be at the same time proved that the Dodo existed also at Rodriguez, for these bones have been found in this isle in a cave (grotte), as M. Quoy, who saw them on his passage to the Isle of France, has assured me; and not at the Isle of France under beds of lava, as M. Cuvier has stated from erroneous information in his note read lately to the academy. Then there would be nearly a certainty that the Dodo was a Gallinaceous Bird; but in making the observation that these bones come from the Isle of Fernandez, and that the description of the Solitaire of Leguat accords sufficiently well with a bird of this order, or at least with a GallinoGralle, it might be that the bones actually in the hands of M. Cuvier were no other than those of the Solitary Bird properly so called, and not those of the true Dronte."

The memoir is illustrated with four plates. The first is a coloured copy of the head of the Dodo from the Museum portrait, of the size of the original. In the painting, the author observes, the head is at least a foot long from the occiput to the extremity of the bill; but the head at Oxford is only eight inches and a half, or about twothirds. The bill, he adds, makes out nearly three-fourths of the whole length. The second plate gives a profile of the Oxford head from a sketch taken from the original, and a view of the same seen from above, and skulls of the Urubu and Vultur Papa. The third plate gives two views of the foot preserved in the British Museum, and the remains of the foot at Oxford; a foot of the Heath-Cock (Coq de Bruyère), a foot of a Penguin, and a foot of Vultur Papa. The fourth plate gives a profile of the cast of the head at Oxford, and a view of the same seen from below.

In the British Museum (1837), in cases 65-68 (Room xiii.), are the Ostrich; Bustards "which in many respects are allied to the Gallinaceous Birds;" the foot and cast of the head of the Dodo above alluded to; the Courser and Pratincole; and at page 99 of the 'Synopsis ' (1832) we have the following observations :-"Over the door adjoining the twelfth room is an original painting of the Dodo, presented to the Museum by George Edwards, Esq., the celebrated ornithological artist, and copied in his works, plate No. 294, who says it was drawn in Holland from a living bird brought from St. Maurice's Island in the East Indies.' The only remains of this bird at present known are a foot (case 65) in this collection (presented by the Royal Society), and a head and foot said to have belonged to a specimen which was formerly in Tradescant's Museum, but is now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. The cast of the head above mentioned (in the same case) was presented by P. Duncan, Esq. The bird in the shortness of the wings resembles the ostrich, but its foot in general rather resembles that of the common fowl, and the beak from the position of its nostrils is most nearly allied to the vultures; so

that its true place in the series of birds, if indeed such a bird ever really existed, is not as yet satisfactorily determined."

Mr. Swainson ('Natural History and Classification of Birds,' 1836), speaking of the birds of prey, says (p. 285):-" The third and last type of this family appears to us to be the Secretary Vulture of Africa, forming the genus Gypogeranus. At least we cannot assign it to any other known division of the Raptores without separating it much more widely from its congeners than our present state of knowledge will sanction. It has been thought indeed that this remarkable bird represented one of the primary divisions of the whole order, in which case it would stand between the owls and the Dodo; but its similarity to the vultures and the falcons in our opinion is too great to favour this supposition; while, on the other hand, it will subsequently appear that the circle of the Falconida is sufficiently complete to show that it does not enter into that family." After some other observations Mr. Swainson concludes his remarks on the Secretary thus:-"It must be remembered also that the very same objections occur against placing this bird (the Secretary) between the Strigida (Owls) and the Didide (Dodos) as those we have intimated against considering it as the grallatorial type of the Vulturidæ."

That a bird or birds called by the name of Dodo and the other appellations which we need not here repeat once existed, we think the evidence above given sufficiently proves. We have indeed heard doubts expressed whether the Museum portrait was taken "from a living bird," and have also heard it suggested that the picture may represent a specimen made up of the body of an ostrich to which the bill and legs of other birds have been attached; and here it is that the destruction of Tradescant's specimen becomes a source of the greatest regret. Whatever was the condition of that specimen, as long as the skin was preserved there existed the means of ascertaining whether it was real or a made-up monster; and when the vicechancellor and the other curators, in making their lustration, gave the fatal nod of approbation they destroyed that evidence. With regard to the picture, we have endeavoured to place it before the reader as well as our limited means will permit, in order that he may have an opportunity of judging from the internal evidence as to the probability of the portrait being taken from a living bird, and with this view we have given the accessories as they appear in the painting as well as the principal figure.

Dr. J. E. Gray, among others, still inclines, we believe, to the opinion that the bird represented was made up by joining the head of a bird of prey approaching the Vultures, if not belonging to that family, to the legs of a Gallinaceous Bird; and his opinion, from his attainments and experience, is worthy of all respect. His reasons for considering the Dodo as belonging to the Raptores chiefly rest on the following facts, premising, as he does, that it is to be borne in mind that in the Raptorial Birds the form of the bill is their chief ordinal character, which is not the case with the Grallatores or the Natatores, where the form of the feet and legs are the chief character of the order :

"1. The base of the bill is enveloped in a cere, as may be seen in the cast, where the folds of the cere are distinctly exhibited, especially over the back of the nostrils. The cere is only found in the Raptorial Birds.

"2. The nostrils are placed exactly in front of the cere, as they are in the other Raptores; they are oval, and nearly erect, as they are in the True Vultures, and in that genus alone; and not longitudinal as they are in the Cathartes, all the Gallinaceous Birds, Grallatores, and Natatores; and they are naked, and covered with an arched scale, as is the case in all the Gallinaceœ.

"3. In Edwards's picture the bill is represented as much hooked (like the Raptores) at the tip; a character which unfortunately cannot be verified on the Oxford head, as that specimen is destitute of the horny sheath of the bill, and only shows the form of the bony core.

"With regard to the size of the bill, it is to be observed that this part varies greatly in the different species of Vultures; indeed so much so, that there is no reason to believe that the bird of the Oxford head was much larger than some of the known Vultures.

"With regard to the foot," adds Dr. Gray, "it has all the characters of that of the Gallinaceous Birds, and differs from all the Vultures in the shortness of the middle toe, the form of the scales on the leg, and the bluntness of the claws."

But if we grant Dr. Gray's position, see what we have to deal with. We have then two species, which are either extinct or have escaped the researches of all zoologists, to account for one, a bird of prey, to judge from its bill, larger than the condor; the other a Gallinaceous Bird, whose pillar-like legs must have supported an enormous body. As to the stories of the disgusting quality of the flesh of the bird found and eaten by the Dutch, that will weigh but little in the scale when we take the expression to be, what it really was, indicative of a comparative preference for the turtle-doves there found after feeding on Dodos usque et nauseam.' "Always partridges" has become almost proverbial, and we find from Lawson how a repetition of the most delicious food palls. "We cooked our supper," says that traveller, "but having neither bread nor salt our fat turkeys began to be loathsome to us; although we were never wanting of a good appetite, yet a continuance of one diet made us weary;" and again: "By the way

our guide killed more turkeys, and two pole-cats, which he eat, esteeming them before fat turkeys."

With regard to the form of the bill, we must be careful how we lay too much stress on that. Who would have expected to find a bill "long, slender, smooth, and polished, in form resembling that of an Ibis, but rather more straight and depressed at the base," on an Emeulike body with rasorial legs and feet? Yet such is the form of Apteryx. As to the argument arising from the absence of the spur, it is worth but little at best; and it may be said in favour of those who would place the Dodo between the Struthious and Gallinacious Birds, that its absence in such an osculant bird would be expected.

If the picture in the British Museum and the cut in Bontius be faithful representations of a creature then living, to make such a bird a bird of prey-a Vulture, in the ordinary acceptation of the termwould be to set all the usual laws of adaptation at defiance. A Vulture without wings! How was it to be fed? And not only without wings, but necessarily slow and heavy in progression on its clumsy feet. The Vulturide are, as we know, among the most active agents for removing the rapidly decomposing animal remains in tropical and intertropical climates, and they are provided with a prodigal development of wing to waft them speedily to the spot tainted by the corrupt incumbrance. But no such powers of wing would be required by a bird appointed to clear away the decaying and decomposing masses of a luxuriant tropical vegetation-a kind of Vulture for vegetable impurities, so to speak-and such an office would not be by any means inconsistent with comparative slowness of pedestrian motion.

Nevertheless we have the following expression of opinion from Professor Owen, who in 1845 published a paper on the subject of the Dodo in the 'Transactions of the Zoological Society.' He concludes his paper thus: "Upon the whole then the Raptorial character prevails most in the structure of the foot as in the general form of the beak of the Dodo, and the present limited amount of our anatomical knowlege of the extinct terrestrial bird of the Mauritius supports the conclusion that it is an extremely modified form of the Raptorial order. Devoid of the power of flight, it could have had small chance of obtaining food by preying upon the members of its own class; and if it did not exclusively subsist on dead and decaying organised matter, it most probably restricted its attacks to the class of reptiles and to the littoral fishes, Crustacea, &c., which its well developed back toe and claw would enable it to seize and hold with a firm gripe." Mr. Strickland, who is the last writer upon the affinities of the Dodo, and has produced a work quite exhaustive of the subject, refers the Dodo to the Columbida.

"The extensive group of Columbida, or Pigeons," says Mr. Strickland, "is very isolated in character, and though probably intermediate between the Insessorial and Gallinaceous orders, can with difficulty be referred to either. In this group we find some genera that live wholly in trees, others which are entirely terrestrial, while the majority, of which the common Wood-Pigeon is an instance, combine both these modes of life. But the main characteristic of all is their diet, composed almost exclusively of the seeds of various plants and trees. We accordingly find much diversity in the forms of their beaks, according to the size and mechanical structure of the seeds on which each genus is destined to live. Those which feed on cereal grains and the seeds of small grasses and other plants, like the Common Pigeon and Turtle-Dove, have the beak considerably elongated, feeble, and slender. But in tropical countries there are several groups of Pigeons called Nutmeg-Eaters and Trerons, which feed on the large fruits and berries of various kinds of palms, fig, nutmeg, and other trees. These birds, and especially those of the genus Treron (Vinago of Cuvier) have the beak much stouter than other pigeons, the corneous portion being strongly arched and compressed, sc as greatly to resemble the structure of certain Rapacious Birds, especially of the Vulturine family. This Raptorial form of beak is carried to the greatest extent in the genus Didunculus, a very singular bird of the Samoan Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Very little is yet known of its habits, but Mr. Stair, a missionary recently returned from those islands, has reported that the bird feeds on bulbous roots. Its first discoverer, Mr. Titian Peale, an American naturalist (whose account is I believe still unpublished) saw something in its form or habits that reminded him of the Dodo, and hence its generic name. Sir W. Jardine, who first described the bird, under the name of Gnathodon strigirostris in the 'Annals of Natural History,' vol. xvi. p. 175, referred it conjecturally to the Megapodide, though he recognised in it several dove-like characters. And Mr. Gould, who has given two figures of it in his 'Birds of Australia,' part 22, pronounces that the bird approaches nearest to the Pigeons. We shall soon see that the Didine and Columbine hypotheses, though apparently incongruous, resolve themselves (as often happens) into one truth.

think, class it in a group whose characters are far more consistent with what we know of its structure and habits. There is no à priori reason why a pigeon should not be so modified in conformity with external circumstances as to be incapable of flight, just as we see a Grallatorial Bird modified into an Ostrich, and a Diver into a Penguin. Now, we are told that Mauritius, an island forty miles in length and about one hundred miles from the nearest land, was when discovered clothed with dense forests of palms and various other trees. A bird adapted to feed on the fruits produced by these forests would in that equable climate have no occasion to migrate to distant lands; it would revel in the perpetual luxuriance of tropical vegetation, and would have but little need of locomotion. Why then should it have the means of flying? Such a bird might wander from tree to tree, tearing with its powerful beak the fruits which strewed the ground, and digesting their strong kernels with its powerful gizzard, enjoying tranquillity and abundance, until the arrival of man destroyed the balance of animal life, and put a term to its existence. Such in my opinion was the Dodo, a colossal brevipennate frugivorous pigeon." The first idea of referring the Dodo to the Pigeons seems to have occurred to Professor Reinhardt of Copenhagen. To Mr. Strickland however must be given the credit of laboriously working out this idea. We can here only refer to his volume, The Dodo and its Kindred,' for further information. In working out the anatomical details he was assisted by Dr. Melville, now Professor of Natural History, Queen's College, Galway, Ireland. This part of the work is remarkable for the detailed manner in which the subject is gone into, and the beautiful illustrations which accompany the text. We have now to draw attention to another part of this subject. In speaking of the Dodo several references have been made to a bird called the Solitaire, and many of the writers quoted have confounded it with the Dodo, or made it a second species. This bird was first described by Leguat, who was for many years the commander of a party of French Protestant refugees who settled upon the island of Rodriguez in the year 1691. In his description* of the isle, which is called either Diego-Rodrigo, or Diego-Ruys, or Rodrigo, he gives the following account :-"We had also another creek on the other side of our cabins, and full of oysters sticking to the rock. We went often to breakfast there, and brought some home, with which we made an excellent ragout with palm-tree cabbages and turtle's fat. Of all the birds in the island the most remarkable is that which goes by the name of the Solitary (le Solitaire), because it is very seldom seen in company, though there are abundance of them. The feathers of the males are of a brown-gray colour; the feet and beak are like a turkey's, but a little more crooked. They have scarce any tail, but their hind part, covered with feathers, is roundish like the crupper of a horse. They are taller than turkeys. Their neck is straight, and a little longer in proportion than a turkey's, when it lifts up its head. Its eye is black and lively, and its head without comb or cop. They never fly; their wings are too little to support the weight of their bodies; they serve only to beat themselves and flutter when they call one another. They will whirl about for twenty or thirty times together on the same side during the space of four or five minutes; the motion of their wings makes then a noise very like that of a rattle, and one may hear it two hundred paces off. The bone of their wing grows greater towards the extremity, and forms a little round mass under the feathers as big as a musket-ball: that and its beak are the chief defence of this bird. 'Tis very hard to catch it in the woods, but easy in open places, because we run faster than they, and sometimes we approach them without much trouble. From March to September they are extremely fat, and taste admirably well, especially while they are young. Some of the males weigh forty-five pound. "The females are wonderfully beautiful, some fair, some brown : 1 call them fair because they are of the colour of fair hair. They have a sort of peak, like a widow's, upon their breasts, which is of a dun colour. No one feather is straggling from the other all over their bodies, being very careful to adjust themselves and make them all even with their beaks. The feathers on their thighs are round like shells at the end, and being there very thick, have an agreeable effect; they have two risings on their craws, and the feathers are whiter there than the rest, which livelily represent the fine neck of a beautiful woman. They walk with so much stateliness and good grace, that one cannot help admiring them and loving them, by which means their fine mien often saves their lives.

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'Although certain genera of Columbida are thus seen to assume a form of beak resembling that of the Raptores, yet no two groups in the same class can be more opposed in habits and affinities than the 'feroces Aquila' and 'imbelles Columbæ.' It is interesting however to observe that mechanical strength, whether for the devouring of animal or vegetable substances, is obtained in both cases by a similarity of structure.

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