FLIGHTLESS BIRDS. 93 
confirmed by the subsequent discoveries of great numbers 
of the bones of this bird in the island of Mauritius, which 
have enabled its skeleton to be almost entirely recon- 
structed, thereby placing its Columbine nature beyond 
doubt, a fact which is now admitted by all naturalists, 
And as showing the accuracy of the old paintings of the 
Dodo, some of which it can hardly be doubted were painted 
from living specimens, it may be pointed out that the out- 
line of the reconstructed skeleton strikingly harmonises 
in form and size with the figure of the Dodo, as represented 
in these pictures. 
Clumsy, flightless, and uncouth, the Dodo may well be 
regarded as a very degenerate descendant of the Columbine 
stock, and the causes which led to its passing into such a 
helpless condition are of much interest. It was a ground 
feeder, and its principal food is supposed to have been 
the fruits of palm and other trees with which the island 
of Mauritius was formerly covered, the fruits of which 
doubtless strewed the ground in profusion, and its power- 
-ful beak was developed for the purpose of tearing open 
these fruits to get at the kernel. A superabundance of 
food increased the size and weight of the body, and, at the 
same time, induced a certain amount of inertia, so that a 
diminishing desire to use its wings went, pari passu, with 
a diminishing capacity for doing so. The increase in size 
was further aided by the diversion of nerve force from the 
wings to the requirements of general body growth, until, 
with increasing weight, there came a time when the wings 
could no longer raise the bird from the ground, and 
henceforward their complete functional disuse and sub- 
sequent atrophy was only a matter of time. Had the 
ancestors of this bird been exposed to the attacks of 
enemies in their island home, such a type as the Dodo 
could never have arisen, for any birds which varied in that 
