70 INTRODUCTION. 
of the principal muscles employed in mastication, and moreover bounding the posterior nares 
and subocular cell. Unfortunately this bone is generally deficient in fossil crania. 
The shape of the tympanic bone, and more particularly that of its inferior articular 
surface, are useful guides to classification. Much value is also to be attached to the form 
and position of the prefrontal (aerymal, of authors), and to the circumstance whether it be 
anchylosed to the cranium, or separate from it; to the form and size of the posterior nasal 
fissures ; to the presence or absence of the vomer, and of the ossified septum narium. 
The general pneumaticity of the cranium, and the ratio in which the several elements 
participate in that property, furnish less distinctive characters ; the development of pneuma- 
ticity depending on many variable conditions. 
In the former part of this work the views expressed on the affinities of the Dodo by 
various distinguished zoologists and anatomists, are given at length; of these, Professor Owen 
alone had the opportunity of studying the evidence furnished by the foot, which led him to 
regard the Dodo as an extremely modified form of the Raptorial order. In the catalogue of 
the fossil remains of Mammalia and Aves in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons, 
published in 1845, apparently before he had seen the dissected foot, the Dodo is placed 
among the Cursorial, or Struthious birds, from some vague resemblances in the cere and 
advanced nostrils, to the corresponding parts in different members of that limited group. 
The merit due to Professor Reinhardt, who from the evidence afforded by the mutilated 
cranium in the Gottorf Museum, assigned to the Dodo, thus bandied about, a final resting 
place among the Pigeons, has been freely conceded by his fellow-labourer, Mr. Strickland ; 
who, however, from a minute and accurate comparison of the bones of the leg with those of 
other types, had arrived at the same goal, by a different, but equally certain path. The idea 
once attained served to elucidate the true relations of the cere and advanced tubular nostril, 
which had hitherto been misunderstood ; the disappearance of the mandibular horny sheath 
was also readily explained by the facility with which it desquamates in other members of this 
group. Some learned ornithologists admit, that the correct interpretation of these external 
characters alone, might have led to the proper allocation of this strange and almost fabulous 
creature. 
From anxiety to obtain the fullest information, application was made to Mr. Duncan, 
Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, for permission, which was liberally granted, to remove 
the integuments from the left side of the head of the Dodo, where they were most decayed, 
and the requisite dissection was judiciously performed by the Reader of Anatomy, Dr. Acland. 
During this procedure, the leading pomts of resemblance between the cranium and that of 
the Pigeons were pointed out by Mr. Strickland, who has kindly associated the writer with 
him, in the task of describing the remains of this extinct form and its affine, the Solitaire. 
My testimony, hence, is that only of an impartial observer with no hypothesis to defend, 
and who claims no share in the merit due to those who have succeeded in restoring the Dodo 
to its proper rank. 
