352 



SYSTEMATIC ZOOLOGY 





Fig. 347. Columba livia domestica, 

 the common pigeon. (Photo- 

 graphed from a mounted speci- 

 men by the author.) 



seeds, and in drinking immerse the bill in the water and take a 



continuous draught, a method prac- 

 ticed by no other birds so far as 

 known. The young are non-preco- 

 cious and are carefully tended by the 

 parents. The flesh of pigeons is very 

 palatable, and in many countries they 

 form an important article of food. 

 Every student should read Darwin's 

 account of his experiments in breed- 

 ing domestic pigeons. 



To this same suborder belong two 

 birds which have become extinct 

 within recent times. The more famil- 

 iar of these is the dodo, Didus ineptus 

 ( Fig. 348), which lived in the islands 

 of Rodriguez, Bourbon, and Mauritius 

 in the Indian Ocean, in considerable 

 numbers in the early part of the seven- 

 teenth century. It was a large bird, weighing from twenty to 

 twenty-five kilos, 

 with small wings 

 and incapable of 

 flight. It was 

 killed for food, 

 and through the 

 influence of man 

 and the domestic 

 animals became 

 extinct in the lat- 

 ter part of the 

 seventeenth cen- 

 tury. The other 

 bird, the solitaire, 



J eZOpilCtpS SOll- p,,-, 34 g Didus ineptus, the extinct dodo; color gray, with 

 tCiricX was Some- yellow wing and tail feathers ; natural size, 80 cm. high ; weight, 



12.5 kg. (From Ludwig-Leunis' Synopsis der Thierkunde.) 



what larger than 



a turkey, and weighed about the same as the dodo ; it, too, 



was incapable of flight. Its flesh was said to be very pala- 



