M^ Guvjer's Notice of some supposed Bones. of ike Dodo, 31, 



curly feathers of a yellowish gray colour ; the feet were short and 

 strong ; the toes four in number, one of which was placed poste- 

 riorly. The head was heavy, covered anteriorly with down, and' 

 at the superior and posterior parts with short feathers, which form-, 

 ed a sort of hood, — an appearance from which the bird has since 

 received the inappropriate name of Cygnus cucullatus. The beak 

 was large, strong, deeply grooved, swelled out, and curved at the 

 point. In 1605, Clusius published a figure of this bird, from a 

 drawing made by a person who accompanied the vessels which dis-, 

 covered the Mauritius. From the description which he has added 

 to this figure, it appears that the stomach always contained stones, 

 like the gizzard of the Gallince. The flesh was blackish, fat, and 

 very thick on the chest, so that a single bird was suflScient food for 

 twenty-five men ; it had a very bad taste, was hard in old birds, 

 and of a disagreeable smell. Nuremberg, after Clusius, described 

 this animal. Bontius also afterwards gave an account of it, with 

 a better figure than Clusius'. His plate was engraven after an oil 

 painting, which subsequently passed into the possession of Sir 

 Hans Sloane, and then of Edwards, who bequeathed it to the Bri- 

 tish Museum, where it is still preserved. 



The Dutch gave this bird the names of Drofite and Dodars, in 

 reference to its weight. Of Dodars other naturalists have made 

 Dodo, and Linnaeus formed the name Didus, which he applied to 

 'a genus composed of three species, Didus ineptus, D. solitariuSy 

 and D. nazarenus. These three species were established on bad 

 descriptions of the same bird, and every thing leads to the opinion, 

 that the Isles of France and Bourbon have never possessed more 

 than the single species first described by Clusius. 



In 1626, Herbert spoke again of the Drontes; but it seems that 

 these birds, too clumsy to escape from their pursuers, and too large 

 to hide themselves easily, were completely destroyed shortly after 

 the establishment of Europeans on the Isles of France and Bour- 

 bon. For a long time they have never been seen, and some na- 

 turalists have even pretended that they never existed, and that this 

 species was formed from erroneous descriptions of auks and pen- 

 guins. The skin of a dodo is, however, in existence ; the British 

 Museum has a foot, and the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford has an- 

 other foot, with a head in a very bad state. We had long despair- 

 ed of ever obtaining any other part of the animal, when M. Cuvier 

 made a most unexpected discovery. M. Julien Desjardins, of the 

 Isle of France, having sent home some bones which he had found 

 in this island under beds of lava, and which belonged principally 

 to that great land tortoise, incorrectly named Testudo indica, M. 

 Cuvier observed amongst them many bones of a bird, and soon de- 

 termined that they must belong to the species of which we are 

 speaking. These parts are a cranium, a sternum, and some bones 

 of the wing and leg. The sternum has a prominent crest, which 

 distinguishes it from that of the cassowary or the ostrich, in which 



