THIUD ANNUAL MEETING 



35 



\vhere occur also the bones of several other giant storks. Not that 

 the giants are fundamentally more important because of their size, 

 but because they arrest attention first. But when size and structural 

 peculiarities combine the palaeontologist is ecstatic. Of the ducks, geese, 

 s\vans, and mergansers, there is a long list of fossil forms, occurring 

 mostly since the upper Miocene, and so closely resembling existing 



Fig. 97 — Skull of Odontopteryx toliapicus Owt^n (restored); 

 from the liondon clay (Eocene). The alveolar margins 

 of the jaws show denticulation which must not be con- 

 founded with true dentition. 



types as to be identified mainly with them. Plovers, gulls, and auks 

 are represented among fossils. 



The Great Auk (Alca impemiis) has been so recently exterminated — 

 the last two having been taken in Iceland in the year 1844, — that its 

 bones, though common in certain superficial deposits of Iceland, Green- 

 land, Labrador, Maine, and Massachusetts, are scarcelj- fossil, as the 

 word is ordinarily understood. 



The next landmark is found among the Columbae, or pigeons. The 





Fig. 98 — Pelecnnus intermedius. Fraas, Haunenberg (Miocene). Beak and skull, aud 

 base of occiput at right. 



Dodo (Didus ineptus), of the island of Mauritius, and the Solitaire 

 {Pczohaps solitarins), of Rodriguez Island, in the Indian Ocean, are 

 familiar to every one, being figured so frequently in geologies and 

 natural histories. The accompanying illustrations give good ideas of 

 the Dodo, which used to be exhibited in England and the continent. 

 No living dodo has been known since 1681. Though clumsy and heavy, 

 weighing about fiftj^ pounds, and flightless, as the rudimentary wings 

 show, and though unlike pigeons in oiitward appearance, it is neverthe- 

 less counted a ground-pigeon. The taller, though closely allied, Soli- 

 taire, also a ground-pigeon, whose last appearance is recorded in 1693, 

 W'as also disqualified for flight, having rudimentarj- wings. The two 



