o as to leave no doubt of his
meaning dodos; but perhaps the most important facts (if they be facts)
that he relates are that they had a cry like a gosling ("il a un cry
comme l'oison"), and that they laid a single white egg ("gros comme un
pain d'un sol") on a mass of grass in the forests. He calls them
"oiseaux de Nazaret," perhaps, as a marginal note informs us, from an
island of that name which was then supposed to lie more to the
northward, but is now known to have no existence.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Skeleton of a Dodo, _Didus ineptus_, Museum of
Zoology, Cambridge, and cast of a Head in Oxford.]

In the catalogue of Tradescant's _Collection of Rarities, preserved at
South Lambeth_, published in 1656, we have entered among the "Whole
Birds," a "Dodar from the island _Mauritius_; it is not able to flie
being so big." This specimen may well have been the skin of the bird
seen by Lestrange some eighteen years before, but anyhow we are able to
trace the specimen through Willughby, Edward Llwyd and Thomas Hyde, till
it passed in or before 1684 to the Ashmolean collection at Oxford. In
1755 it was ordered to be destroyed, but, in accordance with the
original orders of Ashmole, its head and right foot were preserved, and
still ornament the museum of that university. In the second edition of a
_Catalogue of many Natural Rarities_, &c., "to be seen at the place
formerly called the Music House, near the West End of St Paul's Church,"
collected by one Hubert _alias_ Forbes, and published in 1665, mention
is made of a "legge of a Dodo, a great heavy bird that cannot fly; it is
a Bird of the Mauricius Island." This is supposed to have subsequently
passed into the possession of the Royal Society. At all events such a
specimen is included in Grew's list of their treasures which was
published in 1681. This was afterwards transferred to the British
Museum. It is a left foot, without the integuments, but it differs
sufficiently in size from the Oxford specimen to forbid its having been
part of the same individual. In 1666 Olearius brought out the
_Gottorffische Kunst Kammer_, wherein he describes the head of a
_Walghvogel_ which some sixty years later was removed to the museum at
Copenhagen, and is now preserved there, having been the means of first
leading zoologists, under the guidance of Prof. J. Th. Reinhardt, to
recognize the true affinities of the bird.

We have passed over all but the principal narratives of voyagers or