38 



VERTEBRATA. 



No. 55. [186] .(Epiornis maximus, St. Hilaire. 



Egg and Tauso-Metatarsus (cast). 

 These remains indicate a three-toed, cur- 

 sorial bird, which must have stood twelve 

 feet high. They were discovered in 1850, 

 in Madagascar, in alluvial banks of streams, 

 and belong to the Garden of Plants. Size 

 of the tarso-metatarsus, 8x5; of the egg, 

 13 X 9. One of these eggs is equal to 148 

 hen's eggs, and will hold two gallons of 

 water, and are the largest known birds 

 eggs. 



No. 56. [184] Didus ineptns. 



Head (cast). The Dodo 

 has been extirpated and 

 become one of the extinct 

 fossil forms within the 

 last 150 j-ears. At the be- 

 ginning of the seventeenth 

 century it abounded in 

 Mauritius and adjacent 

 islands. One was exhibited 

 alive in London in 1638, as 

 a great curiosity. Now 

 the only known relics that remain are the head and foot of an individual in 

 the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England, the leg of another in the British 

 Museum, and a skull in the Royal Museum at Copenhagen. It was an aber- 

 rant form of the Pigeon family {Columbm), as determined by the researches of 

 Reinhardt, Strickland and Melville. As the Greenland whale may be called 

 a permanent suckling, the teeth never penetrating the gums, though in youth 

 they are distinctly traceable in the dental groove of the jaws; as the Proteus 

 is a permanent tadpole, so the Dodo was a permanent nestling, clothed with 

 down instead of feathers, and with the wings and tail so short and feeble as 

 to be utterly insufficient for flight. We cannot form a better idea of it 

 than by imagining a young duck or gosling enlarged to the dimensions of a 

 swan. It was at first believed to belong to the ostrich tribe, and Professor 

 Owen placed it among the vultures. It had a strong, predaceous bill, hooked 

 at the tip, and the face was covered with naked skin. The nearest living 

 approach to the Dodo is the Didunculus of the Navigator's Islands. 



Size, 9x5. 

 No. 57. [185] Didus ineptus. 



Right Foot (cast). From the same locality and museum. 



Size, 9x3. 



