340 



hind and below the openings of the eyes. The nostrils are oblique and 

 situated at the lower border and a little in advance of the middle of the 

 upper mandible. The feathered skin of the head seems to have formed a 

 transverse fold across the frontal region of the cranium, and a naked skin to 

 have extended thence to a raised border arching above the nostrils over the 

 upper mandible, where the gnathotheca or horny sheath of the bill com- 

 menced. The lower mandible is moderately deep, compressed, with a 

 symphysis one inch and a half in length, sloping from below upwards and 

 forwards. In this particular, as well as in the general form of the beak, 

 the Auks, especially the great Alca impennis, resemble the Dodo ; but in 

 the genus Aim the beak is much more compressed, the nostrils are situated 

 at its base, the forehead is relatively narrower, and does not rise so high 

 or so abruptly above the base of the beak, the orbits are relatively larger 

 and separated by a much narrower interspace, and the cranium is longer 

 in proportion to its breadth and to the length of the beak. 



The differences which the head of the Dodo offers in comparison with 

 that of any of the Vulture-tribe, to which it has been supposed to have 

 a close affinity*, are still greater. The symphysis of the lower mandible 

 of the Vultures is neither compressed nor directed as in the Dodo : the 

 nostrils present the same obliquity, but are situated further from the 

 margin and nearer to the base of the upper mandible ; the cranium, from 

 the occiput to the anterior border of the orbits, is much longer in pro- 

 portion to the beak than in the Dodo. On the other hand, the charac- 

 teristic breadth of the skull and of the interorbital space, and the small 

 size of the orbits, are repeated in the Apteryx ; the nostrils have the 

 same relative position in the Rhea, and are defended by a scale as in the 

 Dodo ; the naked cere above the base of the beak is present in the 

 Ostrich, Rhea and Apteryx, but is less developed than in the Vultures 

 and the Dodo. 



An exquisitely finished miniature of the living Dodo in the celebrated 

 painting by Savery -j- of ' Orpheus charming the Beasts,' in the collection 



* See De Blainville, ' Memoire sur le Dodo,' 4to. Nouvelles Annales du Museum d'Histoiie 

 Naturelle, torn. iv. 1831. 



t This artist died at Utrecht in 1639. 



