hind with one leg, and then making a bound onward with the other, it goes with such prodigious velocity, that the swiftest racer would be left far behind.

The same degree of voraciousness which we perceive in the ostrich, obtains as strongly here. The cassowary swallows every thing that comes within the capacity of its gullet. The Dutch assert, that it can devour not only glass, iron, and stones, but even live and burning coals, without testifying the smallest fear, or feeling the least injury. It is said, that the passage of the food through its gullet is performed so speedily, that even the very eggs which it has swallowed whole, pass through it unbroken, in the same form they went down. In fact, the alimentary canal of this animal, as was observed above, is extremely short; and it may happen that many kinds of food are indigestible in its stomach, as wheat or currants are to a man when swallowed whole.

The cassowary's eggs are of a gray ash colour, inclining to green. They are not so large nor so round as those of the ostrich. They are marked with a number of little tubercles of a deep green, and the shell is not very thick. The largest of these is found to be fifteen inches round one way, and about twelve the other.

The southern parts of the most eastern Indies seem to be the natural climate of the cassowary. His domain, if we may so call it, begins where that of the ostrich terminates. The latter has never been found beyond the Ganges; while the cassowary is never seen nearer than the islands of Banda, Sumatra, Java, the Molucca Islands, and the corresponding parts of the continent.2 Yet even here this animal seems not to have multiplied in any considerable degree, as we find one of the kings of Java making a present of one of these birds to the captain of a Dutch ship, considering it as a very great rarity. The ostrich, that has kept in the desert, and unpeopled regions of Africa, is still numerous, and the unrivalled tenant of its own inhospitable climate. But the cassowary, that is the inhabitant of a more peopled and polished region, is growing scarcer every day. It is thus that in proportion as man multiplies, all the savage and noxious animals fly before him at his approach they quit their ancient habitations, how adapted soever they may be to their natures, and seek a more peaceable, though barren, retreat; where they willingly exchange plenty for freedom, and encounter all the dangers of famine to avoid the oppressions of an unrelenting destroyer.

2 A species of the cassowary has been discovered in New Holland; it is seven feet two inches long; the crown of its head flat, which with the neck and body are covered with bristly feathers, varied with brown and gray; its throat is nakedish, and of a bluish lead colour; the feathers of the body are a little incurved at the tip; its wings are hardly visible; its legs are of a brown colour, and its feet with three

toes.-ED.

CHAP. IV.

THE DODO.

MANKIND have generally made swiftness the attribute of birds; but the dodo has no title to this distinction. Instead of exciting the idea of swiftness by its appearance, it seems to strike the imagination as a thing the most unwieldy and inactive of all nature. Its body is massive, almost round, and covered with gray feathers; it is just barely supported upon two short thick legs, like pillars, while its head and neck rise from it in a manner truly grotesque. The neck, thick and pursy, is joined to the head, which consists of two great chaps, that open far behind the eyes, which are large, black, and prominent; so that the animal, when it gapes, seems to be all mouth. The bill, therefore, is of an extraordinary length, not flat and broad, but thick, and of a bluish white, sharp at the end, and each chap crooked in opposite directions. They resemble two pointed spoons that are laid together by the backs. From all this results a stupid and voracious physiognomy; which is still more increased by a bordering of feathers round the root of the beak, and which gives the appearance of a hood or cowl, and finishes this picture of stupid deformity. Bulk, which in other ani mals implies strength, in this only contributes to inactivity. The ostrich or the cassowary are no more able to fly than the animal before us; but then they supply that defect by their speed in running. The dodo seems weighed down by its own heaviness, and has scarcely strength to urge itself forward. It seems among birds what the sloth is among quadrupeds, an unresisting thing, equally incapable of flight or defence. It is furnished with wings, covered with soft ash-coloured feathers, but they are too short to assist it in flying. It is furnished with a tail, with a few small curled feathers; but this tail is disproportioned and displaced. Its legs are too short for running, and its body too fat to be strong. One would take it for a tortoise that had supplied itself with the feathers of a bird; and that thus dressed out with the instruments of flight, it was only still the more unwieldy.

This bird is a native of the Isle of France; and the Dutch, who first discovered it there, called it, in their language, the nauseous bird, as well from its disgusting figure as from the bad taste of its flesh. However, succeeding observers contradict the first report, and assert that its flesh is good and wholesome eating. It is a silly simple bird, as may very well be supposed from its figure, and is very easily taken. Three or four dodos are enough to dine a hundred men.

Whether the dodo be the same bird with that which some travellers have described under the bird of Nazareth, yet remains uncertain. The country from whence they both come is the same;

their incapacity of flying is the same; the form of the wings and body in both are similar; but the chief difference given is in the colour of the feathers, which in the female of the bird of Nazareth are said to be extremely beautiful; and in the length of their legs, which in the dodo are short; in the other, are described as long. Time and future observation must clear up these doubts; and the testimony of a single witness, who shall have seen both, will throw more light on the subject than the reasonings of a hundred philosophers.

NOTE A.

The Dodo, described above, has now become extinct, and its former existence has even been called in question by some writers. The following is a statement of all that is known regarding it. The Hollanders, who, in 1598, fitted out a fleet commanded by Admiral Cornelisz Van Neck, landed at the Isle of France, then generally called Mauritius, and before that known under the name of Ilha do Cirne, or Cisne, which had been imposed upon it by the Portuguese, and signifying 'the isle of swans.' They there found birds as bulky as a swan, which had on a very thick head a sort of capote of skin, and but three or four black feathers in place of wings, and four or five small grayish feathers, and frizzled, instead of a tail. These birds were named by the Dutch Walyvogels, which literally signifies birds of disgust, on account of the hardness of their flesh, which cooking only seemed to render more coriaceous, except that of the stomach, which was found tolerably good. A Dutch vessel set out from the Texel at the end of 1618, under the command of Bontekoe, and having landed at the Isle of Bourbon, then called Mascarenas, the crew found there the same kind of birds, which, so far from being able to fly, were so fat that they even walked with difficulty. The Hollanders named them Dod-aers or Dod-aersen. The relation of Bontekoe, inserted in Hakluyt's Voyages, contains a figure of one of them under the first of these names, but without any other details.

Clusius has described the same bird under the name of gallus gallinaceus peregrinus, and of cygnus cucullatus, which latter epithet is derived from some fancied resemblance between the membrane covering the bird's head, to the capote, or cowl, of a monk. He describes it as having the bill oblong, thick, and crooked, yellow at the base, bluish in the middle, and black at the extremity. The body, according to his statement, was covered only with some short feathers, and four or five black quills were in the place of wings. The hinder part of the body was very fat; and instead of tail there were four or five ash-coloured and frizzled feathers. The legs were rather short, and of an equal circumference throughout, covered with scales of a yellowish brown, from the knee to the toes. The same writer adds, that in the stomach of these birds were found stones of different forms and sizes, which, probably, they were in the habit of swallowing, like the granivorous birds to which systematists have associated them.

This description has been copied by Nieremberg; and Bontius, who has devoted to the dodo the seventeenth chapter of his 'Natural and Medical History of the East Indies,' adds, that it has large black eyes, mandibles, the aperture of which is very ample, a curved neck, and a body so clumsy and fat, that its walk is very heavy.

The description of Willoughby differs but little from that of Clusius and Bontius; but he adds, that

| he himself beheld the spoils of this bird in the museum of Sir John Tradescaut.

weighed at least fifty pounds, and that the stomach was hot enough to digest stones. The weight would appear to be exaggerated, and the pretended faculty of digesting stones is utterly inadmissible. ings, was copied from a drawing made at the MauriThe figure of the dodo, found in Edward's Gleantius from a living individual. This figure has served as a model for all others, and particularly those given by Dr. Latham, by Blumenbach, and by Shaw. The last writer, having remarked some relations between the bill of the dodo and that of the albatross, inquires, whether an inaccurate representation, done by a sailor, might not have given rise to the supposition of a new genus; but when he considers what excessive negligence it would be in any painter to represent a web-footed bird with cleft and separate toes, and to substitute simple winglets for wings of considerable extent, he dismisses this conjecture as of little weight. The same naturalist being determined to continue his researches, in consequence of the assertions of Charleton, who, in his Onomasticon Zoicon,' affirms that the bill and head of the dodo were then in the Museum of the Royal Society, and of Grew who mentions the leg of one of these birds among the curiosities of the British Museum, found the leg in question at the Museum, and another leg, with the bill and part of the cranium, in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, to which all the curious objects in that of Tradescaut had been transferred. These two pieces came from the individual examined by Willoughby and Ray; and the foot, notwithstanding some injuries of time, seemed to him exactly like the one he had seen in London. Shaw gives the figures of them both, and declares that his doubts concerning the existence of the dodo were completely dispelled.

Herbert, in his travels, tells us that the dodo

There are, unfortunately, no other facts than those we have stated which are calculated to throw any light on the existence of the dodo, which has never been seen in Europe since the era above-mentioned, when it was said that these birds were found in great numbers in the Isles of France, Bourbon, Rodrigue, and Sechelles. From the notes furnished by M. Morell to the Abbe Rozier, in 1778, and which were inserted in the 'Journal de Physique,' that all those monstrous birds called Dronte, or Dodo, Solitary Dodo, and Nazarene Dodo, were perfectly unknown to the oldest inhabitants of these islands, where they had not been seen for more than a century, it is impossible to conceive how birds of such weight, without proper wings, and not web-footed, consequently unable either to swim or fly, could cross the space which separates the islands which they have assigned as their habitation. This reflection, too, invalidates the conjecture of Grant, that the dodo may yet be found on the coasts of some uninhabited islands. The only mode remaining of enabling us to form any positive judgment on the bird in question, would be to examine and compare the earliest relations of the penguins and manchots, and to see what analogies may exist between them and the accounts of the dodo.

Mr. John V. Thomson, in a communication to the Magazine of Natural History,' on the subject, says: "Having resided some years amongst those islands, inclusive of Madagascar, and being curious to find whether any testimony could be obtained on the spot, as to the existence of the dodo in any of the islands of this or the neighbouring archipelagos, I may venture to say, that no traces of any kind could be found, no more than of the truth of the beautiful tale of 'Paul and Virginia, although a very general belief prevailed as to both the one and the other. I there discovered, however, a copy of the scarce and curi

ous voyage of Leguat, who, and his companions, appear to have been the first residents of Rodrigue; and, although some allowances appear to be necessary on account of the period in which he wrote, for descriptions and drawings apparently from memory, and a somewhat traveller-like sketch of imagination to enhance the value of his book; yet his evidence must be deemed conclusive, strengthened as it is by the collateral testimony of other voyagers, and by all the facts and statements brought forward by Mr. Duncan, in a paper upon this subject, published in the Zoological Journal' for January, 1828, p. 554: from which it appears, that a bird of corresponding size and character did actually exist, of which the only remains are a bill and foot in the Ashmolean museum at Oxford, and a foot in the British museum, all of which I had the satisfaction of examining on my return from the Mauritius in 1816.

Mr. Duncan, in the paper alluded to, proves that a specimen of this bird existed in Tradescaut's museum at Lambeth, where it was seen by Ray and Willoughby. This museum being subsequently removed to Oxford by Dr. Ashmole, we find the specimen there in 1700, by the testimony of Hyde, in his Religionis Veterum Persarum, &c. Hist.;' and in a catalogue of the museum, drawn up since 1755, it is stated that "the Numbers from 5 to 46 (No. 29. being that of the dodo) being decayed, were ordered to be destroyed at a meeting of the visitors, Jan. 8, 1755." It is, therefore, almost certain that the bill and foot still to be seen in that depository, were those of the above specimen. To verify the painting, which is also to be seen in the British Museum, Mr. Duncan appears to have taken all the pains possible, and states it to have been drawn from a living bird, sent from the Mauritius to Holland, the Dutch being the first colonists of that island; to dissipate all doubts as to its accuracy, however, it should be collated with a description taken from the Ashmolean specimen, should such be found to exist. The island of Rodrigue, or Diego Ruys, although seen by several of the earlier voyagers, after the discovery of the route to India by the Cape, does not appear to have been visited anterior to the voyage of Leguat, from its unapproachable appearance, and the apparent continuity of the extensive madreporetic reef which everywhere surrounds it, and upon which the sea continually breaks, at a very considerable distance from the shore: the same causes still operate in repelling the tide of colonization, as, at the time of our late conquest of the group to which it belongs, a single French family constituted the whole of its population. Leguat and his companions, then, may be presumed to have seen it in its virgin state; a circumstance which makes his narration doubly interesting, and shows not only the abundance of its animal productions, but the paradisiacal peace and amity which appeared to reign amongst them, and the little dread they seemed to possess at the presence of their destined destroyer. Of the dodo, he says:

"Of all the birds which inhabit this island, the most remarkable is that which has been called Solitaire (the solitary), because they are rarely seen in flocks, although there is abundance of them. The males have generally a grayish or brown plumage, the feet of the turkey-cock, as also the beak, but a little more hooked. They have hardly any tail, and their posterior, covered with feathers, is rounded like the croup of a horse. They stand higher than the turkey-cock, and have a straight neck, a little longer in proportion than it is in that bird when it raises its head. The eye is black and lively, and the head without any crest or tuft. They do not fly, their wings being too short to support the weight of their bodies; they only use them in beating their sides, and in whirling round; when they wish to call

one another, they make, with rapidity, twenty or thirty rounds in the same direction, during the space of four or five minutes; the movement of their wings then makes a noise which approaches exceedingly that of a kestrel (Crecerelle), and which is heard at more than 200 paces distant. The bone of the false pinion is enlarged at its extremity, and forms, under the feathers, a little round mass like a musket-bullet: this and their beak form the principal defence of this bird. It is extremely difficult to catch them in the woods; but as a man runs swifter than they, in the more open spots it is not very difficult to take them; sometimes they may even be approached very easily. From the month of March until September, they are extremely fat, and of most excellent flavour, especially when young. The males may be found up to the weight of 45 lb.; Herbert even says 50 lb. The female is of admirable beauty. Some are of a blond, others of a brown, colour; I mean by blond the colour of flaxen hair. They have a kind of band, like the bandeau of widows, above the beak, which is of a tan colour. One feather does not pass another over all their body, because they take great care to adjust and polish them with their beak. The feathers which accompany the thighs are rounded into a shell-like form, and, as they are very dense at this place, produce a very agreeable effect. They have two elevations over the crop, of a somewhat whiter plumage than the rest, and which resemble wonderfully the fine breast of a woman. They walk with so much stateliness and grace combined, that it is impossible not to admire and love them; so much so, that their appearance has often saved their life. Although these birds approach, at times, very familiarly when they are not chased, they are incapable of being tamed; as soon as caught they drop tears, without crying, and refuse obstinately all kind of nourishment, until at last they die. There is always found in their gizzard (as well as in that of the males) a brown stone, the size of a hen's egg; it is slightly tuberculated (raboteuse), flat on one side, and rounded on the other, very heavy and very hard. We imagined that this stone was born with them, because, however young they might be, they always had it, and never more than one; and besides this circumstance, the canal which passes from the crop to the gizzard is by one half too small to give passage to such a mass. We used them, in preference to any other stone, to sharpen our knives. When these birds set about building their nests, they choose a clear spot, and raise it a foot and a half off the ground, upon a heap of leaves of the palm tree, which they collect together for the purpose. They only lay one egg, which is very much larger than that of a goose. The male and female sit by turns, and it does not hatch until after a period of seven weeks. During the whole period of incubation, or that they are rearing their young one, which is not capable of providing for itself until after several months, they will not suffer any bird of their own kind to approach within 200 paces of their nest; and what is very singular is, that the male never chases away the females; only, when he perceives one, he makes in whirling, his ordinary noise, to call his companion, which immediately comes and gives chase to the stranger, and which she does not quit until driven without their limits. The female does the same, and allows the males to be driven off by her mate. This is a circumstance that we have so often witnessed, that I speak of it with certainty. These combats last sometimes for a long time, because the stranger only turns off, without going in a straight line from the nest; nevertheless, the others never quit until they have chased them away." We have, in this last relation of Leguat, who Voyage de Francois Leguat, Gentilhomme, Bressan, 1708.