97 
bill, pointed at the end, with moderate sized, longitudi¬ 
nal nostrils. They live on the sea-shore, and eat fish, and 
carrion of all kinds. The young are generally of a 
dark, speckled-gray colour; the adult, gray or white. 
The true Gulls have rounded tails; from them the Ra¬ 
zor-bill only differs in the under jaw being longest, and 
much compressed. The Lestris, or Skua Gull, differs 
from the common Gull by having the two middle tail 
feathers longer than the rest. The Terns (Case 88) have 
forked tails, and the Boobies square tails and very long 
wings. Their habits are disgusting, subsisting chiefly 
on food rejected from the stomach of the common Gull, 
in its alarm when chased by the Skua, and which the 
latter catches before it falls into the water. 
Over the door adjoining the Twelfth Room, is an 
original painting of the Dodo, presented to the Museum 
by George Edwards, Esq., the celebrated ornitholo¬ 
gical artist, and copied in his works, plate No. 294, 
who says it was “ drawn in Holland, from a living 
bird brought from St. Maurice’s Island in the East 
Indies.” The only remains of this bird at present 
known are a foot (Case 65) in this collection, (presented 
by the Royal Society,) and a head* and foot, said to have 
belonged to a specimen which was formerly in Trades- 
cant’s Museum, but is now in the Ashmolean Museum at 
Oxford. The cast of the head above mentioned, (in the 
same Case,) was presented by P. Duncan, Esq. The bird, 
in the shortness of the wings, has much analogy to the 
ostrich, but its foot, in general, rather resembles that of 
the common fowl, and the beak, from the position of its 
nostrils, is most nearly allied to the Vultures; so that its 
true place in the series of birds, if indeed such a bird ever 
really existed, is not, as yet, satisfactorily determined. 
The Table cases in the middle of the Room contain 
the General Collection of Shells. 
Cases 1, 2, contains the shells of cephalopodous Mol- 
* The late Dr. George Shaw has given a figure of the head of 
the Dodo, in the Naturalist’s Miscellany, PI. 166. 
h lu.sca, 
ROOM XIII. 
Nat. Hist. 
