6 



The ^^'aturalist. 



to ^lauritius. Xot many years ago the dodo was classexl with the sea= 

 serpent, the mermaid, and the griffin, and such like fearful wild 

 fowl." But at last someone unearthed from a collection of rubbish in 

 the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford a genuine head and foot of the 

 dodo, the remains of a stuffed specimen which had originally been in 

 the museum of the celebrated Tradescant j the rest of the bird had 

 been thrown away as worthless, being a little moth-eaten. A head was 

 also discovered in a similar deposit in Copenhagen. These, with a foot 

 in the British Museum, formed the sole relics in existence of this birdc 

 Historical testimony was then sought for amongst the narratives of 

 the earlier voyagers who had visited the Mascarene Islands, and a 

 great amount of information, much of it of a very curious nature, was 

 accumulated, Amongst other books the journal of a certain Francois 

 Leguat was studied, the commander of a party of French refugees who 

 visited ^ ' - - and also Roclrigues, where he stayed two years, 

 quitting ... ^.i.d iq 1693. He gave a fuU account of the natural 

 history of the place, and particularly described the solitaire with great 

 minuteness. Search was then made to see if any remains of this bird 

 were in Europe, and in 1830 a few bones were found to be in Paris 

 which had been sent over in the end of the last century. Search was 

 also made in the island, and specimens of the bones, mostly fragments, 

 were found from time to time in the caves in the coralline limestone, 

 which I have already mentioned. 



(To ie continued.) 



OX THE METHODS OF MICROSCOPICAL RESEARCH 

 IN USE IN THE NAPLES AQUARIUM. 



Srm[AEY (By GEO. BEOOK, F.L.S.) op a Paper bt Dr. Paul ]\L\ter, in 



THE " ;XLlTTHElLr>-GEN A. D. ZoOLOG. StATIOX, ZU NeAPEL," VOL. 2, PART 1, 1880. 



{Continued^) 



In the hurry of going over my notes of the first part of Dr. Mayer's 

 paper, I neglected to mention a very important item in the use of 

 acid alcohol; that is, that the objects should not be allowed to 

 remain in the solution after they have been completely penetrated by 

 the liquid, but at once removed to 70 % alcohol. Neglect in this 

 particular may cause serious damage to the specimens. For such 

 objects as PaiiduUuus^ and other Crustacea, in which the cephalo- * 

 thorax is at all times very apt to separate from the abdomen, perhaps 

 it would be best not to use this medium at all, or at all events to only 

 use say \ X acid. 



