51 
as I seemed to do on this point in the array of evidence before the “ Parliamentary 
Committee on the British Museum, 1860,” 1 was glad to find my views on type-forms 
adopted and paraphrased by the President of the British Association in his Inaugural 
Address at the Meeting at Nottingham', in the present year. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES. 
PLATE I. 
Ideal Scene in the island of Mauritius before its discovery, in 1598, by the Dutch, 
founded on : — 
Fig. 1. Picture of the Dodo, by Roelandt Savery, 1626, in the Royal Gallery of Berlin. 
Fig. 2. Fac-simile of R. Savory’s Picture of the Dodo, in the possession of the late 
Wm. J. Broderip, Esq., F.R.S. (no date). 
Fig. 3. Picture of the Dodo, by R. Savery, 1628, in the Imperial Collection of the 
Belvedere, Vienna. 
Each figure is coloured, and of the exact size, as in the original paintings. 
PLATE II. 
Two views of the Dodlet {Didunculus strigirostris, Peale ; Gnathodon, J ardine), natural 
size, from the living bird, obtained at the Samoan or Navigators’ Islands, and 
transmitted from Sydney, New South Wales, by George Bennett, M.D., 
F.L.S.®, to the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London, in 1864, where 
the paintings, of which the above are fac-similes, were made for the present 
work. A sketch of the dried head of the Dodo in the Ashmolean Museum, 
Oxford, of rather less than half the natural size, is introduced into the pic- 
ture, now in the Author’s possession 
‘ “ The doctrine of typical nuclei seems only a mode of evading the difficulty. Experience does not give us 
the types of theory; and, after all, what are these types? It must be admitted there are none in reality. 
How are we led to the theory of them ? Simply hy a process of abstraction from classified existences. Having 
grouped from natural similitudes certain natural forms into a class, we select attributes common to each 
member of the class, and caU the assemblage of such attributes a type of the class. This process gives us an 
abstract idea ; and we then transfer this idea to the Creator, and make Him start with that which our own 
imperfect generalization has derived.” (Address, &c., hy WinniAM E. Gkove, Esq., Q.C., M.A. 8vo, London, 
1866; p. 31.) 
^ See Dr. Bennett’s excellent notes on the living Diduimilus, in the ‘ Proceedings of the Zoological Society of 
London,’ 1864, p. 139. 
* To my friend Dr. Bennett I owe the first specimens of the Nautilus pompilius, impregnated uterus of the 
Kangaroo and Ornithorhynchus, the young Omithorhynchus, and other rare subjects of early Memoirs. 
Natural History owes much to this accomplished and indefatigable Observer. 
H 2 
