82 



TIIK DAXr.ER BIIRD 



ward sluggish movements rendered it an easy prey to man — an enemy 

 to which it had hitlierto heen a total stranger. StutTed skins and even 

 the living bird itself were brought as curiosities to Europe, and to remove 

 every possible doubt as to the former existence of the Dodo, there are 

 now in the English museums portions of three different individuals of 

 a large species of walking bird, to which all naturalists agree in assign- 

 ing but one name, that of the Dodo. These have been in the posses- 

 sion of well known persons, and their transference from one hand to 

 another can be traced, ever since 1594 when the Dutch were exploring 

 the countries around the Cape of Good Hope. 



There is authentic evidence on record of an entire skin of this bird 

 having once belonged to the museum of Oxford, which, being adjudged 

 by the Board of Visitors to be in an unfit state for further keeping, they 

 ordered it to be destroyed in 1755. One of the feet and the head how- 

 ever were preserved, and still remain as evidence of the existence of 

 this singular species, and are valued as the rarest and most inestimable 

 treasures of Oxford. There is also in the British museum in London, 

 the leg of another individual, and a very obscure looking painting of 

 the entire bird as it appeared in its native country, both of which have 

 been seen by the writer of this notice. The painting is said to have 

 been executed in Holland, from a living specimen of the Dodo which 

 had been brought from St. Maurice's Island. The ownership of this 

 painting cannot be traced farther back than as the property of Sir Hans 

 Sloane when president of the Royal Society. All of the localities known 

 to have been frequented by the Dodo have in recent times been travers- 

 ed in every conceivable direction by explorers in Natural History, with- 

 out detecting any trace of it whatever in a living condition. In 1830 

 some fossil bones were disinterred from under a bed of lava in the Isle 

 of France and were sent to the Paris museum. Among many other 

 bones belonging to a large living species of land tortoise, were those of 

 the head, humerus and sternum of the Dodo. Upon inspecting these 

 remains Cuvier pronouced them to have belonged to a huge bird of the 

 gallinaceous order. 



The most extraordinary vertebrate species, however, which is known 

 to have recently gone out of existence, is the Dinornis, or Danger bird 

 of New Zealand. The discovery of it dates from Nov. 1839, when Pro- 

 fessor Owen exhibited at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London, 

 a fragment of the shaft of a femur or thigh bone, six inches in length 

 and five inches and a half in its smallest circumference — both extremi- 

 ties being broken ofl". The cancelated structure so requisite and remark- 

 able in birds of llight, being absent in lliis bone, it was declared by Prof. 



