The Didunculus, or Little Dodo. 347 



the last, specimen of the Didinse, or family of the Dodos, that 

 has ever been seen alive in Europe.* 



Of the Great Dodo itself no perfect specimen remains. A 

 foot in the British Museum, an imperfect skull at Oxford, some 

 few engravings and paintings of the animal, are all that serve 

 to show the previous existence of one of the largest, and 

 what might have been most useful, of domesticated land 

 birds. Its value as food, and its want of the power of flight, 

 however, rendered it a desirable and easy prey to the earlier 

 voyagers. 



Until recently so little was known about the Dodo that 

 its powerfully hooked beak led Professor Owen to place it 

 among the birds of prey, and to surmise that its food consisted 

 of reptiles and Crustacea. Some other naturalists regarded it 

 as allied to. the gallinaceous group. Within the last few years, 

 however, the more critical examinations of the scanty remains 

 of the Dodo prove, without doubt, that it was a gigantic ground 

 pigeon. This idea will not appear so startling to our precon- 

 ceived notions if it is borne in mind that, in addition to the 

 slender-billed seed and grain-feeding birds that constitute 

 the group of pigeons and doves best known in Europe, there 

 is a group of powerful hooked-beaked pigeons, feeding on the 

 hard-shelled fruits of palms and firmly-husked tropical seeds, 

 requiring a strong beak to crack the outer shell. 



It is to this group that the extinct Dodo and the extant 

 Didunculus belong. The former evidently employed its powerful 

 bill in husking the fruits of the palms indigenous to the 

 tropical islands it inhabited, in the same manner as the latter 

 employs its beak in decorticating smaller fruits and hard-coated 

 seeds. 



All that is known of the history of the living Di- 

 dunculus is soon told. About twenty years since, Lady 

 Harvey bought a collection of Australian birds in Edinburgh. 

 Amongst the skins was one about the size of that of a very 

 large pigeon, of a dark chocolate and resplendent black 

 colour, with the upper jaw or maxilla hooked like that of an 

 owl ; the lower jaw or mandible strong, broad, and furnished 

 with three angular teeth at the apex or part that closed 

 under the hook of the maxilla. 



Sir W. Jardine described this unique specimen, and figured 

 the head in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. 

 xvi., 1845, and termed it Gnathodon Strigirostris. Being 

 regarded as an Australian bird, it was figured under the same 

 name in Gould's magnificent work on the Birds of Australia. 



Subsequently the living animal was discovered, by Mr. 



* The bird is now placed in the second compartment of the western aviary, 

 which is situated to the right of the main entrance. 



