126 APPENDIX. 
tongues, the beak is large, curving a little downwards ; their legs are long, scaly, with only three toes on each foot. 
It has a cry like a gosling, and is by no means so savoury to eat as the Flamingos and Ducks of which we have just 
spoken. They only lay one egg which is white, the size of a halfpenny roll, by the side of which they place a white 
stone the size of a hen’s egg. They lay on grass which they collect, and make their nests in the forests; if one 
kills the young one, a grey stone is found in the gizzard. We call them Oiseaux de Nazaret.? The fat is excellent 
to give ease to the muscles and nerves. 
11. Page 24. “De Dronte aliis Dodaers,” &c. 
Of the Dronte or Dodaers. Among the islands of the East Indies is reckoned that which by some is called 
Cerne, and by our countrymen, Mauritius, most famous for its black ebony. In this island a bird of wonderful 
form, called Dronte, abounds. In size it is between an Ostrich and a Turkey, from which it partly differs in form 
and partly agrees, especially with the African Ostrich, if you regard the rump, the quills, and the plumage; so that 
it seems like a pygmy among them in respect of the shortness of its legs. The head is large, clumsy, covered with 
a membrane like a hood. ‘The eyes are large and black; the neck curved, prominent, and fat; the beak remarkably 
long and strong, of a bluish white, except the ends, of which the lower is black, the upper yellowish, and both 
pointed and hooked. The gape is hideous, enormously wide, as though formed for gluttony. The body is fat, 
round, and clothed with grey feathers in the manner of Ostriches. On each side, in place of quills, it is furnished 
with small feathered wings, of a yellowish grey, and behind the rump, in place of tail, with five curved plumes of 
the same colour. The legs are yellow, thick, but very short; the toes are four, stout, long, scaly, and the claws 
strong and black. ‘The bird is slow and stupid, easily taken by the hunters. Their flesh, especially that of the 
breast, is fat, eatable, and so abundant that three or four Drontes have sometimes sufficed to feed a hundred 
seamen. If not well boiled, or old, they are more difficult of digestion, and when salted, are stored among the 
ship’s provisions. 
Pebbles of various form and size, of a grey colour, are found in the stomach of these birds, not however formed 
there, as the vulgar and the sailors believe, but swallowed on the sea shore; as though by this proof also it 
appeared that these birds agree with the nature of the Ostrich, since they swallow all kinds of hard substances 
without digesting them. 
11. Page 25. “Num. 5 ist ein kopff,” Xe. 
No.5 is the head of a foreign Bird which Clusius names Gallus peregrinus, Nierenberg Cygnus cucullatus, and 
the Dutch Walghvogel, from the disgust which they are said to have taken to its hard flesh. The Dutch seem to 
have first discovered this bird in the island of Mauritius; and it is stated to have no wings, but in place of them 
two winglets, like the Emeu and the Penguins. 
1 Perhaps this name has been given them from having been found in the isle of Nazareth, which is higher up than that of Mauritius, 
in 17° S. 
