INTRODUCTION. 
XXY 
a bad flyer as to be unable to rise from the ground. It is white, and 
exceedingly tame,—though, for the matter of that, all the other birds 
are so, because they are not disturbed or frightened by being shot at. 
Ten men can catch as many birds in one hour as would suffice to feed 
forty for a whole day.” Five years later the celebrated Dutch navigator, 
Bontekoe, visited these islands, and also saw a few Dodos :■—“ They 
had no wings, and yet could scarcely walk, as they were so fat that 
their bellies touched the ground.” 
We have continued information about this bird up to 1730, “the 
same time in which the talented Bernardin de St. Pierre laid the 
scene of his beautiful Idyll, 4 Paul and Virginia,’ in our island.” 
Even in 1763 a British seaman spoke in such a manner about the 
island of Bourbon that one might be led to believe that this species 
was then still in existence. At length, forty years later, a naturalist 
visited the island, but did not find a single living specimen of this 
remarkable bird surviving; the very name, even, had long since 
passed away from the memory of the inhabitants. The Dodo had 
ceased to exist. 
These islands have, of late years, become the theatre of a great 
amount of investigation after these extinct birds. The result leads 
to the conviction that these do not belong in any degree whatever 
solely to the one family of which the Dodo was the representative, 
but that, on the contrary, there are species to be found among them 
which it is impossible to class with the Dodo. Thus we have arrived 
at the-certain knowledge that a bird of gigantic stature (quite as 
large as the African Ostrich) at one time existed there; as did also 
another species, often spoken of as the “ Oiseau bleu,” which was 
a gigantic Gallinule, in no way allied to the Dodo. We have received 
sufficiently detailed descriptions of both these species from eye¬ 
witnesses, so that we have no need to doubt that they once existed. 
The gradual disappearance of some birds is even now taking place 
before our very eyes : the Manu-mea (. Didunculus strigirostris) —a native 
of the Samoan Island, of IJpola, and nearly allied to the Pigeons 
—is fast disappearing; the harmless Pigeon of Tahiti (Phlegoenas 
erytJiropterd) will, before long, cease to exist; a large night Parrot 
(Strigojjs habroptilus )—belonging to Stewart’s Island, near New 
Zealand—is so persecuted by collectors, and hunted by native dogs, 
that it will soon be numbered amongst the animals that have passed 
away; the “hoary and unwieldy Nestors (Nestor hypopolius and 
d 
