ANCIENT BIRDS 
22 1 
• giant storks. Leaving these, we now pass on to say a few 
words about the Dodo, and some other birds that lived in historic 
times. 
Every one has heard of that singular bird, now totally extinct, 
the Didus ineptus (or Dodo), which formerly inhabited the islands 
of Mauritius and Bourbon (see Plate XXXY.). The last record 
of its appearance dates from the 
year 1681. It was a large and 
heavy bird, bigger than a swan, and 
entirely unlike the pigeons, with 
which, however, it seems clearly to 
be allied. Its wings were so small 
as to be quite useless for flight. The 
legs were short and stout, with four 
toes on each foot, and the tail was 
extremely short, carrying a tuft of 
soft plumes. The beak was decidedly 
hooked, as in birds of prey. 
Visitors to the Natural History 
Museum will see, in the same case 
with the remains of the gigantic 
.dEpyornis from Madagascar, some of 
the bones of this remarkable bird. Fig. 83.— Eestored skeleton of 
, ,-L . ,1 i -i. p 1 1 3^ large bird, Oastornis Edwardsii, 
together with a portrait from an old from Eocene strata near Paris and 
painting. The Oxford Museum once (After M. le Docteur 
Lemoine.) Height over 7 feet. 
possessed a complete stuffed speci- 
men, but now, alas ! only the head and one foot remain. 
In the reports of numerous voyagers who visited the islands of 
Mauritius, Bourbon, and Eodriguez, from the end of the fifteenth 
century to the middle of the seventeenth, we have many accounts 
of the appearance and habits of this bird, evidently sketched from 
