152 EXTINCT SPECIES. 



have amply vindicated the dodo's claim to be regarded a 

 former denizen of the world we live in. 



The dodo was first seen by the Dutch when they landed 

 on the Isle of France, at that time uninhabited, immediately 

 subsequent to the doubling of Cape Horn by the Portuguese. 

 These birds were described as having no wings, but in the 

 place of them three or four black feathers. Where the tail 

 should be, there grew instead four or five curling plumes of 

 a grayish colour. In its stomach each dodo was said to 

 have commonly a stone as big as a fist, and hard as the gray 

 Bentemer stone. The boat's crew of the Jacob van Neck 

 called dodos Walgh-vogels (surfeit-birds), beeause they could 

 not cook them or make them tender ; or because they were 

 able to get so many turtle-doves, birds which had a much 

 more pleasant flavour, so that they took a disgust to dodos. 

 Likewise, it is said that three or four of these birds were 

 enough to afford a whole ship's company one full meal. In- 

 deed, the sailors salted down some of them, and carried them 

 on the voyage. 



Many descriptions of the dodo were given by naturalists 

 after the commencement of the seventeenth century ; and the 

 British Museum contains a painting said to have been copied 

 from a living individual. Underneath the painting is a leg 

 still finely preserved ; and in respect of this leg, naturalists 

 are agreed that it cannot belong to any existing species. The 

 dodo must have been a curious bird, if Mr. Strickland's notion 

 of him be correct ; and Professor Keinhardt, of Copenhagen, 

 holds a similar opinion. The dodo, these naturalists affirm, 

 was a vulture-like dove a sort of ugly giant pigeon but 

 with beak and claws like a vulture. He had companions, or 

 neighbours at least, not dissimilar in nature. Thus, a bird 

 called the solitaire inhabited the small island of Eoderigues, 

 three hundred miles east of the Mauritius. Man has exter- 

 minated the solitaire, as well as other birds nearly allied, 

 formerly denizens of the Isle of Bourbon. 



