222 
EXTINCT MONSTERS 
life. Some of the descriptions are very quaint ; as, for example, 
the graphic sketch of old Sir Thomas Herbert, who saw the bird in 
his travels in the year 1634. In a second island of the Mascarene 
group, viz. that known as Rodriguez, early explorers found the 
Solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria), a near relative of the Dodo, with 
longer legs and neck.^ 
Prom Patagonian strata (perhaps of Miocene age) we have a 
skull and lower jaw of a huge carinate bird, the Phororhachos 
(see Pig. 84). The skull is twenty-three inches long and seven 
Fig. 84. — Kestored skull and lower jaw of Phororhachos longissimus, from the 
Santa Cruz Formation of Patagonia ; i natural size. 
inches deep. These measurements far exceed those of any living 
bird. No quite complete skull is known, but enough to justify 
the construction of a model skull and lower jaw as seen in our 
figure. Possibly this feathered giant was carnivorous, as his 
pointed beak rather suggests. He probably stood some seven feet 
high, but his relationships are doubtful at present. In Plate 
XXXVI. we have a restoration by Mr. Charles Knight showing 
very small wings which would be useless for flight. 
Of all the monsters that ever lived on the face of the earth, the 
1 See the writer’s Creatures of Other Days, p. 166. 
