634 REPORT OP NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1889. 



"A coppey of Mr. Benj. Harry's Journall when he was chief mate of 

 the Shippe Berkley Castle," which shows that he was in Mauritius in 

 1681 and saw "dodos, whose flesh is very hard." In 1693, a little less 

 than a century after its discovery, the bird seems to have become extinct, 

 for Leguat, the careful describer of the solitaire, makes no mention of 

 the dodo, and moreover remarks that ducks, coots, and turtles of all 

 kinds were then become rare. While man began the work of extirpation 

 it is quite likely that his allies, cats, dogs, and pigs, completed the 

 task, for wherever these animals have been introduced and run wild 

 they have wrought sad havoc among the feathered race by destroying 

 their eggs and young.* The cat and dog are said to be largely respon- 

 sible for the rapid decrease of the New Zealand kiwi, and when this 

 curious nocturnal bird passes out of existence it will, in great part, be 

 due to the attacks of those two animals. Shortly after the dodo became 

 extinct the Dutch, who had so far been the occupants of Mauritius, 

 left the island and in 1715 the French took possession, only to give place 

 to the English in 1810, one result of these various changes being that 

 all knowledge of the quaint and curious bird was so utterly lost as not 

 even to live in tradition, while the few specimens preserved in museums 

 were so little known that some naturalists became skeptical as to the 

 previous existence of such a bird as the dodo. 



The publications of Duncan, Broderip, and Strickland, however, speed- 

 ily dissipated the slight haze of doubt, and in 1866 Mr. George Clark, 

 of Mauritius, succeeded in obtaining a considerable series of bones, a 

 portion of which served Mr. Owen for his memoir on the osteology of 

 the dodo. These bones were procured from the mud at the bottom of 

 a small marsh, known as the Mare aux Songes,t lying about a quarter 

 of a mile from the sea. (Piute 01.) At the beginning of the present 

 century this marsh, as well as the land immediately about it, was still 

 covered with large trees whose fruits had doubtless formerly served 

 the Dodo for food, and in this spot the bird seems to have lived and 

 died in peace, for none of the bones are cut or gnawed, and here it left 

 its remains for the benefit of future naturalists. Curiously enough this 

 is the only place in Mauritius where bones of the Dodo have been brought 

 to light, although various other localities have been tried in the hope of 

 coming upon relies of this interesting bird. 



The Solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria), while presenting a general likeness 

 to the Dodo, was somewhat more lightly built, and had decidedly longer 

 legs and neck and a smaller beak. For a knowledge of the external 

 appearance and habits of the Solitaire we are entirely dependent on 

 the account of Francois Leguat, who in 1691 founded a colony at Rodri- 

 guez, which endured only for the brief space of two years, owing to the 

 '. : 



* Dr. Strickland considers runaway slaves to have been the principal agents in the 

 work of destruction, for, hiding in caves and forests, they would have, found in these 

 flightless birds just the prey they would have liked. 



\ I. e. Marais aux Songes, songe being the local name of Ccelidium esculentum. 



