other notices of the bird. A compendious bibliography, up to the year
1848, will be found in Strickland's classical work,[5] and the list was
continued by Von Frauenfeld[6] for twenty years later. The last
evidence we have of the dodo's existence is furnished by a journal kept
by Benj. Harry, and now in the British Museum (_MSS. Addit. 3668._ II.
D). This shows its survival till 1681, but the writer's sole remark upon
it is that its "fflesh is very hard." The successive occupation of the
island by different masters seems to have destroyed every tradition
relating to the bird, and doubts began to arise whether such a creature
had ever existed. Dr Henry Duncan, Scottish minister and journalist, in
1828, showed how ill-founded these doubts were, and some ten years later
William John Broderip with much diligence collected all the available
evidence into an admirable essay, which in its turn was succeeded by
Strickland's monograph just mentioned. But in the meanwhile little was
done towards obtaining any material advance in our knowledge, Prof.
Reinhardt's determination of its affinity to the pigeons (_Columbae_)
excepted; and it was hardly until George Clark's discovery in 1865 of a
large number of dodos' remains in the mud of a pool (the Mare aux
Songes) that zoologists generally were prepared to accept that affinity
without question. The examination of bone after bone by Sir R. Owen
(_Trans. Zool. Soc._ vi. p. 49) confirmed the judgment of the Danish
naturalist.

In 1889 Th. Sauzier, acting for the government of Mauritius, sent a
great number of bones from the same swamp to Sir Edward Newton.[7] From
these the first correctly restored and properly mounted skeleton was
prepared and sent to Paris, to be forwarded to the museum of Mauritius.
Good specimens are in the British Museum, at Paris and at Cambridge,
England.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.--The Solitaire of Rodriguez (_Pezophaps
solitarius_). From Leguat's figure.]

The huge blackish bill of the dodo terminated in a large, horny hook;
the cheeks were partly bare, the stout, short legs yellow. The plumage
was dark ash-coloured, with whitish breast and tail, yellowish white
wings (incapable of flight). The short tail formed a curly tuft.

The dodo is said to have inhabited forests and to have laid one large
white egg on a mass of grass. Besides man, hogs and other imported
animals seem to have exterminated it. But the dodo is not the only
member of its family that has v