3.33 NATURAL HISTORY. 



amusement it was to re-write his travels, each time completely 

 changing the language but retaining the matter, an extract is 

 taken. 



" The DODO, a bird the Dutch call Walghvogel, or Dod 

 Eersen ; her body is round and fat, which occasions the slow 

 pace, or that her corpulencie, and so great as few of them 

 weigh less than fifty pound : meat it is with some, but better 

 to the eye than stomach, such as only a strong appetite can 

 vanquish. . . It is of a melancholy visage, as sensible of nature's 

 injury in framing so massie a body to be directed by com- 

 plemental wings, such, indeed, as are unable to 

 hoise her from the ground, serving only to rank 

 her among birds. Her traine, three small plumes, 

 short and improportionable, her legs suiting to 

 her body, her pounces sharpe, her appetite strong 

 and greedy. Stones and iron are digested, which 

 description will better be conceived in her repre- 

 sentation." The " representation !: here alluded to 

 is that of a globular-shaped bird, perfectly naked, 

 with the exception of three separate feathers on the 

 tail, and a few feathers on the wing. The expression of lugu- 

 brious wisdom on the countenance is irresistibly ludicrous. 



It is still within the range of possibility that this bird 

 should again be discovered, as at present but little of Mada- 

 gascar has been searched, and in that island, if any where, it 

 will be found. 



Another bird, the gigantic Dinornis, has been extirpated 

 from the face of the earth by man. This enormous bird, 

 whose leg is rather larger than that of a fossil elk, and whose 

 head could not have been less than ten feet and a half from 

 the ground, was at one time an inhabitant of New Zealand, but 

 has been extirpated for many years, a fate likely to befal the 

 defenceless Apteryx. In the Anatomical Museum at Oxford 

 is a cast of the leg of the Dinornis, standing side by side with 

 that of an ostrich. The leg of the ostrich is quite insignificant 

 by the side of the enormous cast. 



