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life. Some of the descriptions are very quaint ; as, for example, 

 the graphic sketch of old Sir Thomas Herbert, who saw the bird in 

 his travels in the year 1634. In a second island of the Mascarene 

 group, viz. that known as Eodriguez, early explorers found the 

 Solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria), a near relative of the Dodo, with 

 longer legs and neck. 1 



From Patagonian strata (perhaps of Miocene age) we have a 

 skull and lower jaw of a huge carinate bird, the Phororhachos 

 (see Fig. 84). The skull is twenty-three inches long and seven 



PIG. 84. Restored skull and lower jaw of Phororhachos longissimus, from the 

 Santa Cruz Formation of Patagonia ; natural size. 



inches deep. These measurements far exceed those of any living 

 bird. No quite complete skull is known, but enough to justify 

 the construction of a model skull and lower jaw as seen in our 

 figure. Possibly this feathered giant was carnivorous, as his 

 pointed beak rather suggests. He probably stood some seven feet 

 high, but his relationships are doubtful at present. In Plate 

 XXXVI. we have a restoration by Mr. Charles Knight showing 

 very small wings which would be useless for flight. 



Of all the monsters that ever lived on the face of the earth, the 

 1 See the writer's Creatures of Other Days, p. 166. 



