22 
island of the same geographical region—Mauritius—has occupied a greater share of the 
attention of ornithologists. 
As the Dodo, together with the Great Awk, have perished, or passed away as living 
species, like Dinornis, within the historical period, I have deemed them suitable sub- 
jects for Supplements to the larger work devoted to the wingless birds of New Zealand. 
With respect to Didus ineptus much information has been obtained since the date of 
the first Memoir, in which a passing analogical reference is made to it’. 
The osseous part of the organization of the Dodo has now been almost entirely 
recovered, and forms the chief subject of the present Supplement. 
This bird appears to have been first seen by the Portuguese in 1497, during the 
famous voyage of Vasco de Gama, who, having doubled the Cape of Good Hope, 
discovered some sixty leagues beyond it an isle, which, from the number of birds 
found upon it “of the size and forms of Swans, but with wings like those of the Bat,” 
he called “Ilha des Cisnes.” About a century afterwards, the Dutch, following the 
track of the adventurous Portuguese, took possession of the “Island of Cerne,” which 
they afterwards called “‘ Mauritius:” and in the account of the voyage of Jacob van Neck 
and Wybrand van Warwijk, undertaken in 1598, the peculiar birds of that island are 
described, under the name of Walgh-vogels, as being “as large as Swans, with large 
heads, and a kind of hood thereon; no wings, but, in place of them, three or four black 
little pens, and their tails consisting of four or five curled plumelets.” A similar 
description is given, with a figure of the Dodo, in De Bry’s ‘ Descriptio Insule Do 
Cerne a nobis Mauritius dicte’ (1601). A second grotesque figure was published by 
Clusius in his ‘ Exotica’ (1605), taken from a rough sketch of the Dodo by a Dutch 
seaman who had seen the bird in a voyage to the Moluccas in the year 1598: Clusius 
adds the following more valuable evidence of the Dodo, from actual inspection of part 
of the bird. “I happened,” says Clusius, “to see in the house of Peter Pauwius, 
primary Professor of Physic in the University of Leyden, a leg thereof cut off at the 
knee, lately brought over out of Mauritius his island. It was not very long from the 
knee to the bending of the foot, being but little more than four inches [Dutch], but 
of a greater thickness, so that it was almost four inches in compass and covered with 
thick-set scales: on the upper side broader and of a yellowish colour; on the under or 
back part of the leg lesser and dusky. ‘The upper side of the toes was also covered 
with broad scales; the under side wholly callous. The toes were short for so thick a leg, 
for the length of the greatest or middlemost toe to the nail did not much exceed two 
inches; that of the other toe next to it scarce came up to two inches; the back-toe fell 
something short of an inch and a half; but the claws of all were thick, hard, black, less 
than an inch long, but that of the back-toe longer than the rest, exceeding an inch ”*. 
' P. 1. See also Transactions of the Zoological Society, vol. ii. p. 257 (1838), 
* From Willughby’s Translation, quoted by W. J. Broderip, Esq,, F.R.S., the learned contributor of the 
article Dopo in the * Penny Cyclopedia.’ 
