UOUO. Did/us 



Other travellers, such as Legnat and De Bry, agree with Bontius in his description of 

 the bird, and coincide in his opinion of the excellence of its flesh ; but one writer, Sir 

 T. Herbert, who visited the Mauritius about 1625, differs greatly in his estimation of the 

 value of the Dodo as an article of food. In his book of travels, which is perhaps 

 the quaintest and raciest to be found among such literature, he speaks as follows of 

 this bird : 



" The Dodo, a bird the Dutch call Walghvogel, or Dod Eersen ; her body is round and 

 fat, which occasions the slow pace, or that her corpulencie, and so great as few of them 

 weigh less than fifty pound : meat it is with some, but better to the eye than stomach, 

 such as only a strong appetite can vanquish. ... It is of a melancholy visage, as sensible 

 of nature's injury in framing so massie a body to be directed by complimental wings, 

 such, indeed, as are unable to hoise her from the ground, serving only to rank her among 

 birds. Her traine, three small plumes, short and improportionable, her legs, suiting to 

 her body, her pounces sharpe, her appetite strong and greedy. Stones and iron are 

 digested ; which description will better be conceived in her representation." 



So plentiful were the Dodos at one time, and so easily were they killed, that the 

 sailors were in the habit of slaying the birds merely for the sake of the stones in their 

 stomachs, these being found very efficacious in sharpening their clasp-knives. The nest of 

 the Dodo was a mere heap of fallen leaves gathered together on the ground, and the bird 

 laid but one large egg. The weight of one full-grown Dodo was said to be between forty 

 and fifty pounds. The colour of the plumage was a greyish brown in the adult males, 

 not unlike that of the ostrich, while the plumage of the females was of a paler hue. 



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