Mr. Duncan on the Dodo, 



555 



served^ are a bill and a foot in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, 

 aiid a foot in the British Museum. Still however the descriptions 

 and representations of it given by the writers alluded to agree in 

 all essential particulars; and it appears that a satisfactory train of 

 evidence may be brought forward in justification of those modern 

 naturalists who have given the Dodo a place in their systems of 

 ornithology, as a genus, which, if really extinct, has only become 

 so within a period of rather more than two centuries since, but 

 much less than three. 



There are at least three representations of this Bird which may 

 be called original ; because they are manifestly not copied one from 

 the other, and because they are all of very early date, two being 

 in books of the earliest describers, and the third probably copied 

 from a stuffed specimen which appears, by the printed catalogue, 

 and by the incidental mention of several contemporary authors, to 

 have existed in the Museum of the Tradescants at Lambeth, and 

 subsequently at Oxford, when the Museum was placed there by 

 Dr. Elias Ashmole, That they are not imitated one from another 

 will sufficiently appear from the subjoined copies of the three 

 representations. 



No. 1. 



