147 
of the Mascarene Islands. 
happened, at least since the publication of Mr. Strickland's well- 
known work, have naturally excited much attention among orni¬ 
thologists. We therefore take occasion to present our readers 
with a translation of the valuable' paper contributed in 1857 to 
the Royal Academy of Sciences of Amsterdam*, which, being ori¬ 
ginally written in the Dutch language, is probably unknown to 
the majority of them, though a translation into German of part 
of it appeared in the f Journal fur Ornithologie' for 1858. Its 
reproduction here will of course not be taken as necessarily in¬ 
volving our entire acquiescence in all the opinions of the writer; 
but at the same time we think it advisable that English natu¬ 
ralists should not be unacquainted with Professor SchlegePs 
views.— Ed.] 
The islands of Bourbon [Reunion], Mauritius, and Rodriguez, 
which form a natural geographical group and can be classed to¬ 
gether under the name of the Mascarene Islands, have been (espe¬ 
cially in recent times) the subject of repeated inquiries respecting 
the large birds which have become extinct, or rather have been 
extirpated, within the last century or two, and which formerly 
inhabited these islands, but are not met with in other regions of 
the globe. Every one knows that the species of these birds 
hitherto with more or less certainty determined are regarded as 
belonging to one group only—that of the Dodos, so named because 
the large species, that of the island of Mauritius, the Dodo 
proper, is the best known and is especially the most remarkable 
from the size and shape of its bill. Every one knows, also, that 
these birds have given rise to several singular, nay even extra¬ 
ordinary, opinions concerning their true form, and that they 
from the first have attracted the surprise of the unlearned as 
well as of naturalists. 
It will perhaps cause new surprise when I now announce that, 
notwithstanding these frequent investigations, some large birds 
formerly existing on the islands above named have been over¬ 
looked or mistaken, and that one of them was a species which, 
in height at least, equalled the African Ostrich, and, further, that 
it did not belong to the Dodos, but to quite another order of birds. 
* Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninldijke Akademie van Weten- 
schappen. Afdeeling Natimrkunde, vol. vii. p. 116. 
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