456 MANUAL OF ZOOLOGY. 



extent from this type, being ground-loving birds, more closely 

 allied to the ordinary Gallinacei. The only other member of 

 the sub-order which requires special notice, is the remarkable 

 extinct bird, the Dodo (Didus ineptus), which seems certainly 

 to belong here, though its size was gigantic, and some of its 

 characters very anomalous. The Dodo may, properly speak- 

 ing, be said to be extinct, since it no longer occurs in a living 

 state, but it is not extinct in the sense that geologists speak of 

 " fossils " as extinct ; since it has been extirpated by man him- 

 self within quite a recent period in fact not more than three 

 centuries ago. The Dodo was an inhabitant of the Island of 

 the Mauritius up to the commencement of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, and was a large bird, considerably over the size of a swan. 

 All that remains nowadays to prove the existence of the Dodo 

 are two or three old, but apparently faithful, oil-paintings, two 

 heads, a foot, and some feathers, to which a few bones have 

 recently been added. The Dodo owed its extermination to 

 the fact that it was unable to fly. The body must have been 

 extremely weighty, and the wings were rudimentary and com- 

 pletely useless as organs of flight. The legs were short and 

 stout, the feet had four toes each, and the tail was extremely 

 short, carrying, as well as the wings, a tuft of soft plumes. The 

 beak (unlike that of any of the Columbacei except the little 

 Didunculus strigirostris) was strongly arched towards the end, 

 and the upper mandible had a strongly hooked apex, not at all 

 unlike that of a bird of prey. The nearest living ally of the 

 Dodo appears to be the little Didunculus just alluded to, which 

 inhabits the Navigator Islands, and is little bigger than a par- 

 tridge. 



It is worthy of notice that in the little island of Rodriguez, 

 lying to the east of Mauritius, there existed one large wingless 

 bird, the Solitaire or Pezophaps, which has likewise become ex- 

 tinct during the human period. Other cases in which wingless 

 birds have been, or are being, exterminated by man, lead us 

 to the belief that the absence of wings is not compatible with 

 the coexistence of birds and human beings. In other words, 

 the sole protection possessed by birds against the destructive 

 propensities of man is to be found in their power of flight. 



