442 Contributions towards the Natural History 



village of Kow-rowa, where we hired canoes" for the whole 

 party, and arrived on board the Discovery about noon, when 

 all our attendants were rewarded for their services. The king 

 was so pleased with the very favourable report which we were 

 able to make of their conduct, that he himself fixed upon the 

 quantity of articles to be given to them, as the price of their 

 labour and good behaviour, and with his own hand laid out a 

 small piece of iron, fashioned like a chisel, a parcel of small 

 nails, a bunch of beads, two knives, a file, a pair of scissors, a 

 looking-glass, and a few yards of tape, which were handed to 

 each of them ; but I observed that all of them gave up the 

 last article to the king, and were so well satisfied with what 

 they got, that they all expressed a wish of setting out with us 

 again the next day. The chief, Harou, was presented with 

 the same articles, but in greater proportions, together with 

 the addition of an axe, and as much red cloth as would make 

 him a cloak ; the last, however, we understood he was not 

 suffered long to keep, but was obliged to deliver it up to the 

 king. 



Art. IV. Contributions tcwards the Natural History of the 

 Dodo {Didus ineptus Lin.|, {Jig. 107.) a Bird ivhich appears to 

 have become extinct towards the End of the Seventeenth or Begin' 

 ning of the Eighteenth Century. By John V. Thompson, Esq. 

 F.L.S. 



Some philosophers are not disposed to admit of the de- 

 struction of any of the species of animals of contemporaneous 

 creation with man. If the remains of animals found embedded 

 and lapidified in the solid substance of rocks, in every explored 

 region of the globe, differ in toto from the existing races, 

 those, however, which have become extinct during the latest 

 revolutions of our planet, resemble so closely what are now 

 spread over its surface, as to be considered in the relation of 

 species and varieties. Hence we cannot but admit that the 

 successive destruction and utter annihilation of certain animals 

 form a part of the scheme of creative wisdom. What the 

 conditions may have been, under which any particular species 

 of these lost animals perished, must be matter of mere con- 

 jecture, but, with regard to the subject of the present paper 

 (the dodo), those conditions are self-evident. Imagine a bird 

 of the gallinaceous (gallus, cock, or pheasant) tribe, consider- 

 ably larger than a turkey, and consequently adapted for food, 

 totally incapable of flying, and so unwieldy as to be easily run 

 down, and it must be quite obvious that such a bird could not 



