COLUMBID.E. 409 



and abundance until the arrival of man destroyed the 

 balance of animal life, and put a term to its existence. 

 The nest is stated by old voyagers to have been made of 

 herbs and grass, heaped together in the depth of the 

 forest ; and the female is said to have laid but one egg. 

 Of this bird Bontius gives the following description : — 

 " The Dronte- or Dod-aers is, for bigness, of mean size 

 between an Ostrich and a Turkey, from which it partly 

 differs in shape, and partly agrees with them, especially 

 with the African Ostriches, if you consider the rump, 

 quills, and feathers ; so that it was like a pigmy amongst 

 them, if you regard the shortness of its legs. It hath a 

 great ill-favoured head, covered with a membrane resem- 

 bling a hood, great black eyes, a bending, prominent, fat 

 neck, an extraordinary long, strong, bluish-Avhite bill ; 

 only the ends of each mandible are of a. different colour, 

 that of the upper, black, that of the nether, yellowish ; 

 both sharp-pointed and crooked. Its gape huge wide, 

 as being naturally very voracious. Its body is fat and 

 round, covered with soft grey feathers, after the manner 

 of an (Jstrich's ; in each side, instead of hard wing-feathers 

 or quills, it is furnished with small, soft-feathered wings 

 of a yellowish ash-colour ; and behind the rump, instead 

 of a tail, is adorned with fine, small, curved feathers of 

 the same colour. It hath yellow legs, thick, but very 

 short ; four toes on each foot, solid, long, as it were scaly, 

 armed with strong black claws. 



" It is a slow-paced and stupid bird, and which easily 

 becomes a prey to its pursuers. The flesh, especially of 

 the breast, is fat, esculent, and so copious, that three or 

 four Dodos will sometimes sufiice to fill one hundred 

 seamen's bellies. If they be old or not well boiled, they 

 are of difficult concoction, and are salted and stored up 

 for provision and victual. There are found in their 

 stomachs stones of an ash-colour of divers figures and 

 magnitudes ; yet not bred there, as the common people 

 and seamen fancy, but swallowed by the bird, as though 

 by this mark also, nature would manifest that these fowls 

 are of the Ostrich kind, in that they swallow any hard 

 things though they do not digest them." 



This singular bird, therefore, was an inhabitant of the 

 island of the Mauritius at the time of its discovery in the 

 year 1598, and was subsequently brought alive to Europe, 



