444 CLASS AVES. 



Walyvogels, which literally signifies birds of disgust, on 

 account of the hardness of their flesh, which cooking only 

 seemed to render more coriaceous, except that of the stomach, 

 which was found tolerably good. 



A Dutch vessel set out from the Texel at the end of 1618, 

 under the command of Bontekoe, and having landed at the 

 Isle of Bourbon, then called Mascarenas, the crew found 

 there the same kind of birds, which, so far from being able 

 to fly, were so fat that they even walked with difficulty. The 

 Hollanders named them Dod-aers, or Dod-aersen. The rela- 

 tion of Bontekoe, inserted in Hakluyt's Voyages, contains a 

 figure of one of them under the first of these names, but 

 without any other details. 



Clusius has described the same bird under the name of 

 gallus gallinaceus peregrinus, and of cygnus cucullatiis, 

 which latter epithet is derived from some fancied resemblance 

 between the membrane covering the bird's head, to the capote, 

 or cowl, of a monk. He describes it as having the bill oblong, 

 thick, and crooked, yellow at the base, bluish in the middle, 

 and black at the extremity. The body, according to his 

 statement, was covered only with some short feathers, and 

 four or five black quills were in the place of wings. The 

 hinder part of the body was very fat ; and instead of tail, 

 there were four or five ash-coloured and frizzled feathers. 

 The legs were rather short, and of an equal circumference 

 throughout, covered with scales of a yellowish brown, from 

 the knee to the toes. The same writer adds, that in the sto- 

 mach of these birds were found stones of different forms and 

 sizes, which, probably, they were in the habit of swallowing, 

 like the granivorous birds to which systematists have asso- 

 ciated them. 



This description has been copied by Nieremberg ; and Bon- 

 tius, who has devoted to the dodo the seventeenth chapter of 

 his " Natural and Medical History of the East Indies," adds. 



