of the Mascarene Islands. 157 



even in our day, except Wolf, artists can hardly be found who 

 are without failings in this respect, so can we much less ex- 

 pect that the contrary has been the case at the time Leguat 

 lived and with a mere amateur — especially, too, as his figure 

 represents the object in such a remarkable reduction as one 

 twenty-fifth. We have already remarked, in our treatise on the 

 Dodos *, that in the existing rude drawing of that bird from 

 Mauritius, in Van Neck's voyage, it is much more naturally and 

 truthfully delineated than in the figures of all European artists 

 up to this time, by whom the poor Dodo has been transformed 

 into a real monster, and wherein the hind-toe of the foot in the 

 foreground is always wrongly attached and stands in a crooked 

 direction. Now, although the habitus of the Geant in Leguat's 

 figure is very well drawn, although the attitude of the feet, 

 especially of the toes (notwithstanding the representation in 

 perspective), in this plate betrays much more study from nature 

 and more attention than the painters of the Dodo liked to give, 

 yet the drawing of Leguat also has its evident faults. In 

 inspecting my copy of this figure, enlarged to the natural size, 

 it is directly obvious that the body, instead of being the size of 

 that of a Goose t (as Leguat's description says), almost equals 

 that of an African Ostrich. It is quite possible that the head, 

 which is very often represented by the best artists as too big 

 proportionately, is also too big here, and consequently that the 

 neck should be thinner. The same remark is perhaps to be 

 made with regard to the feet, which should be longer just as 

 much as the body is too thick. As it, however, would be very 

 presumptuous to make further inferences in this respect from 

 pure analogies, we limit ourselves here to these remarks. But 

 in order to make them more obvious to the eye, we have pre- 

 pared a new drawing of this bird of the natural size, in which 



* [Versl. ea Mededeel. Konink. Akad. Amsterdam, 1854, pp. 232-256. 

 —Ed.] 



t There arises, however, with me the question whether in this com- 

 parison he meant the body with, (or as sportsmen often do) without the 

 feathers. In the last, probable case, the body will have had, as occm's in 

 the Waterhens, from their long and loose feathers, a much more con- 

 siderable bulk than that of a Goose, the feathers of which are short 

 and closely compressed. 



