98 
NATURAL HISTORY. [EAST. ZOOL. 
naked, their bill vaulted, and the nostrils large, rounded, 
and placed in a wide nasal groove; their legs are short, 
strong, spurless, and their feet are furnished with long 
blunt claws. Their eggs are very large. The Megapodius 
lays them on the sea shore; the Alectura (like snakes) 
deposits them in decaying leaves, &c., which they collect 
for the purpose into heaps, several laying in the same heap, 
thus taking advantage of the warmth produced by their 
fermentation. They are very good for eating. 
The family of Tinamous ( Tinamidas , Case 106) are 
peculiar to tropical America. They are intermediate in 
form between the partridges and the bustards, having the 
long neck and legs and the small feet of the latter, and 
the nostrils covered with a naked scale like the pheasants. 
The beak varies in length ; their wings are short, and the 
tail and hind toe are rudimentary. 
The Wading Birds (Grall^e, Cases 107— ) have 
long slender legs, and the lower part of the thighs naked. 
The family of Ostriches, ( Struthionidce , Cases 107— 
109,) which inhabit plains, are peculiar for their short 
wings, depressed beak, and generally long legs,. as the 
Ostrich of Africa, the Emu of Australia, the Casowary of 
the Indian islands, and the Apteryx of New Zealand. 
In Case 108, is the foot of the Dodo, and a cast of 
the head of that extraordinary bird. Over the North 
Door is an original painting of this bird, presented to 
the Museum by George Edwards, and copied in his works, 
plate 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 in this collection, (presented by the Royal 
Society,) and a head and foot, said to have belonged to 
a specimen which was formerly in Tradescant’s Museum, 
now forming part of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. 
The bird represented in the painting, in the shortness of 
the wings and colour, has much analogy to the ostrich, 
but its foot greatly resembles that of the common fowl, 
and the head, from the cere and the position and form of 
its nostrils, is most nearly allied to the Vultures; so 
that if these remains really belonged to one species, and 
that the one here represented, its true place in the series 
of birds, is not, as yet, satisfactorily determined. 
