Mr. G. Clark's Account of Dodos' Remains. 141 



XIII. — Account of the late Discovery of Dodos' Remains in the 

 Island of Mauritius'^. By George Clark. 



Having had the good fortune to discover a considerable deposit 

 of the remains of the Dodo {Didus ineptus), I conceive that the 

 particulars of an event so interesting to all lovers of natural 

 history may be acceptable to the readers of 'The Ibis/ and I 

 therefore oifer the following statement to its pages. 



I have been nearly thirty years a resident in Mauritius ; and 

 the study of natural history having been the favourite recrea- 

 tion of my life, the hope of finding some remains of the unique 

 and extinct bird that once inhabited this island led me to make 

 many inquiries and researches, alike fruitless. After many 

 years of expectation, I had given up my efiForts in despair, when, 

 some four or live years ago, the late Dr. P. Ayres visited Mahe- 

 bourg, the place of my residence. We had previously exchanged 

 several communications on subjects of natural history, and on 

 this occasion visited together the site of the old Dutch and 

 French settlements on the coast opposite Mahebourg. 



Dr. Ayres suggested to me the probability of finding some re- 

 mains of the Dodo by digging around the ruins of these habita- 

 tions ; but I did not conceive that the plan offered any chance 

 of success. This locality lies at the foot of a mountain called 

 La Montague du Grand Port, from which, in the rainy season, 

 such floods pour down as carry into the sea everything resting 

 on the surface of the ground. In fact there is no part of Mau- 

 ritius where the soil is of such a nature as to render probable 

 the accidental interment of substances thrown upon it. It may 

 be classed under four heads : stiff clay ; large masses of stone 

 forming a chaotic surface ; strata of melted lava, locally called 

 paves, impervious to everything; and loam, intermixed with 

 fragments of vesicular basalt, — the latter too numerous and too 

 thickly scattered to allow anything to sink into the mass by the 

 mere force of gravity. Besides this, the tropical rains, of which 

 the violence is well known, sweep the surface of the earth in many 

 places with a force sufficient to displace stones of several hundred 

 pounds weight. In the presence of these facts, I remarked to Dr. 



* [Vide supra, p. 128.— Ed.] 



