THE DODO. 3 



and one living specimen, now in the Zoological Gardens. This bird 

 has a singular habit of of resting with the tip of its bill placed on 

 the ground. The nostrils of the Apteryx are placed almost at the 

 very extremity of the bill. The aborigines of New Zealand give it the 

 name of Kiwi Kiwi. The food of the bird consists of snails, insects 

 and worms, which latter creatures it obtains by striking the ground 

 with its feet, and seizing them on their appearance at the surface. 



A small but well preserved skin is mounted in the Ashmolean 

 Museum, Oxford, in which the rudimentary wings are very well 

 shown. An entire skeleton is in the museum of the College of Sur 

 geons, and other specimens are to be seen in various collections 



THE DODO. 



This singular bird, which is supposed to be extinct, was discovered 

 at the Mauritius by the early voyagers. For 

 many years their accounts of the Dodors were 

 supposed to be mere .flights of fancy. Lately, 

 however, the discovery of several relics of this 

 bird in various countries has set the question of 

 its existence at rest, but not the question of the 

 proper position of the bird. Some think it 

 belongs to the Pigeons, and some to the ostriches. 

 ^ n tne Ashmolean Museum at Oxford are a head 

 and foot of the Dodo, sole remnants of a perfect 

 specimen known to have existed in 1700; and 

 in the same place, in the year 1847, during the 

 meeting of the British Association, were guttered 

 together the whole of the existing remains from every country. 



In the travels of Sir T. Hubert, in the year 1627, are several accounts. 

 From the work of this traveller, whose amusement it was to re-write 

 his travels, each time completely changing the language but retaining 

 the matter, an extract is taken. 



" 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 sorae, 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 

 arc digested ; which description will better be conceived in her repre- 

 sentation." The " representation" here alluded to is that of a globular- 

 shaped bird, perfectly naked, with the exception of three separate 

 feathers on the tail, and a few feathers on the wing. The expression 

 of lugubrious wisdom on the countenance is irresistibly ludicrous. 

 It ' "' '1 within the range of possibility that this bird may again ba 



