342 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



intermediate type between different families in the class of birds ; in 

 a word every supposition was adopted without approaching the truth, 

 so long as the examination was insufficient. Reinhardt, after care- 

 fully examining the dodo's skull preserved in the Copenhagen Museum, 

 thought he discovered characteristics pointing out a zoological rela- 

 tion beteen the bird of Mauritius and pigeons. A few years later, a 

 great step toward a solution was made. Strickland, availing himself 

 to the utmost of all procurable materials, published in 1848 an im- 

 portant work on the dodo. The fragments we have noted as existing 

 in the Oxford Museum, a head and a foot, had been stripped of 

 integuments, so as to allow the study of the bony parts ; a singular 

 pigeon, the didunculus, having a large curved bill, slightly-developed 

 wings, and feet well formed for walking, had been discovered in the 

 Samoa Island by an American savant. This pigeon, recalling slightly 

 the marks and habits of the dodo, notwithstanding its small size, 

 furnished a new and most valuable term of comparison. Strickland 

 succeeded in this way in proving that the dodo approached very re- 

 markably the family of Columbids, that is, of pigeons. 



After the researches of that able naturalist, no more light could be 

 expected with regard to the famous bird formerly hunted out of exist- 

 ence by the Dutch sailors, without some important discovery. Such 

 a one has quite lately been made in Mauritius Island. In draining a 

 small marsh, poetically called Dream Swamp, George Clark discov- 

 ered a quantity of dodos' bones. These remains, sent to England and 

 very soon distributed throughout France, quickly attracted attentive 

 study ; they permitted the almost complete reconstruction of the skele- 

 ton, and in ^he present state of science all imaginable means of com- 

 parison were at hand. Several zoologists gladly profited by these ad- 

 vantages. Alphonse Milne-Edwards, thoroughly familiar with the 

 osteological characteristics of birds, entered actively on the investiga- 

 tion, and we think has succeeded in determining precisely the natural 

 affinities of this singular bird. Kecognizing, with Strickland, the very 

 close relations connecting the dodo with pigeons, Edwards concludes 

 that the bird of Mauritius is the type of a special family. Thus the 

 fragments of the history of this strangely annihilated being have been 

 successively brought together, but the complete account of the species 

 remains beyond the possibility of discovery. 



Till the seventeenth century the Mascarene Islands were inhabited 

 by many other birds of which the memory has been handed down to 

 us by the merely superficial accounts of some travelers. These birds, 

 some perfectly unfit for flight, others tolerably well endowed as re- 

 gards the power of their locomotive organs, but having nothing to 

 fear in the absence of men, lived undisturbed in the unpeopled regions 

 of Kodriguez, Bourbon, and Mauritius. They have been destroyed 

 by the attacks of settlers in a very short lapse of time ; and now their 

 bones, still collected in small quantities, are the only vestiges that 



