166 THE EXTINCTION OF ANIMALS. 



bird having forsaken its original habits and taken to 

 perching on trees. 



Strictly speaking, the moas of New Zealand come within 

 the category of animals exterminated within the historic 

 period, since they were almost certainly killed off by the 

 Maories ; but as we have no direct historic evidence of 

 their existence, no further mention of them will here be 

 made. We shall commence our survey with three species 

 which were the first to succumb. 



When the Dutch Admiral Van Neck visited Mauritius 

 in the year 1598, he found that island inhabited by a 

 number of ungainly, flightless birds, winch he called 

 walghvogel (disgusting fowl), but which were afterwards 

 termed by the Portuguese dodo (from doudo, a simpleton). 

 Subsequently, many living examples of this bird (the form 

 of which i$ probably well known to our readers) were 

 exhibited in Holland, and their portraits painted lay the 

 two artists Savery. The museum at Oxford also once 

 possessed a stuffed specimen, which, with the exception of 

 the head and a foot, were in 1755 destroyed, as being 

 too much decayed to be worth preserving ! In the year 

 1601 a Dutch ship captured twenty-four dodos for pro- 

 visions, and others soon followed suit, so that at this time 

 the bird was still common. It had, however, disappeared 

 before the close of the century. The last notice of the 

 living bird occurs in the journal of the mate of the Berkley 

 Castle in 1681 ; and from the absence of any mention of 

 it by Leguat, who visited the island in 1693, we may 

 presume that it was already quite extinct. Although the 

 numbers carried away by ships doubtless largely aided in 

 its extermination, Prof. Newton is of opinion that the 

 dodo was finally killed off by the pigs which had run 

 loose over the island. There is evidence that an allied, 

 although totally unknown bird formerly inhabited the 

 neighbouring island of Reunion. 



Near akin to the dodo was the taller and more lightly- 

 built pigeon-like bird formerly inhabiting the island of 

 Rodriguez, and known as the solitaire (Pezophaps). Our 

 sole knowledge of this bird in a living state is derived 

 from the accounts of Leguat, who founded a colony on the 



