157 
of the Mascarene Islands. 
even in our day, except Wolf, artists can hardly be found who 
are without failings in this respect, so can we much less ex¬ 
pect that the contrary has been the case at the time Leguat 
lived and with a mere amateur—especially, too, as his figure 
represents the object in such a remarkable reduction as one 
twenty-fifth. We have already remarked, in our treatise on the 
Dodos *, that in the existing rude drawing of that bird from 
Mauritius, in Van Neck's voyage, it is much more naturally and 
truthfully delineated than in the figures of all European artists 
up to this time, by whom the poor Dodo has been transformed 
into a real monster, and wherein the hind-toe of the foot in the 
foreground is always wrongly attached and stands in a crooked 
direction. Now, although the habitus of the Geant in Leguat's 
figure is very well drawn, although the attitude of the feet, 
especially of the toes (notwithstanding the representation in 
perspective), in this plate betrays much more study from nature 
and more attention than the painters of the Dodo liked to give, 
yet the drawing of Leguat also has its evident faults. In 
inspecting my copy of this figure, enlarged to the natural size, 
it is directly obvious that the body, instead of being the size of 
that of a Gooset (as Leguat's description says), almost equals 
that of an African Ostrich. It is quite possible that the head, 
which is .very often represented by the best artists as too big 
proportionately, is also too big here, and consequently that the 
neck should be thinner. The same remark is perhaps to be 
made with regard to the feet, which should be longer just as 
much as the body is too thick. As it, however, would be very 
presumptuous to make further inferences in this respect from 
pure analogies, we limit ourselves here to these remarks. But 
in order to make them more obvious to the eye, we have pre¬ 
pared a new drawing of this bird of the natural size, in which 
* [Versl. en Mededeeh Konink. Akad. Amsterdam, 1854, pp. 232-256. 
—Ed.] 
f There arises, however, with me the question whether in this com¬ 
parison he meant the body with, (or as sportsmen often do) without the 
feathers. In the last, probable case, the body will have had, as occurs in 
the Waterhens, from their long- and loose feathers, a much more con¬ 
siderable bulk than that of a Goose, the feathers of which are short 
and closely compressed. 
