DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMALS. 55 



noxious. God alone knows when they approach 

 these limits ; it is he, therefore, that employs man 

 or other animals to destroy a certain number of 

 them, that they may bear a due proportion to 

 other beings on which they act ; or if he wills to 

 punish mankind, he suffers their numbers to in- 

 crease so as to answer this intention. But to all 

 his hosts, he says, " Thus far shall thou go and 

 no further." Therefore, when the ocean, or fires 

 below its bed, or other causes elevate islands 

 above its surface, it is he that conducts to them 

 the population he intends should occupy them. 



The islands of Bourbon and Mauritius both 

 appear to be of volcanic origin : amongst their 

 aboriginal animal inhabitants was a most extra- 

 ordinary gallinaceous bird, called the Dodo ;* 

 this bird, like the ostrich and cassowary, had 

 only rudiments of wings, and of course was 

 unable to fly ; being unfit for food, though of 

 the gallinaceous order, and a very ugly and dis- 

 gusting object, it soon became extinct in those 

 islands, and the only remains of it are a leg and 

 foot at the British Museum, and a skeleton of 

 the head in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. 

 It has been contended that this bird, having 

 never been discovered elsewhere, was peculiar 

 to these islands, but there are reasons for be- 

 leiving, that it was not the only species of its 



1 Didus ineptus. 



