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THE NATURALIST.

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THE DODO.

Every reader of popular natural history must recollect the figure of this extraordinary bird; although he may not be aware that it is considered to have become extinct towards the end of the seventeenth or beginning of the eighteenth century.  The conditions of this disappearance are self-evident.[15] Imagine a bird of the gallinaceous (gallus, cock, or pheasant) tribe, considerably larger than a turkey, and consequently adapted for food, totally incapable of flying, and so unwieldy as to be easily run down, and it must be quite obvious that such a bird could not long continue to exist in any country to which mankind extended their dominion.  This will account for its being found only in those islands of the Indian Ocean which, on their being first discovered by Europeans, were uninhabited, or difficult of access to the nearest people.  The group which is situated to the eastward of Madagascar, consisting of Bourbon, Mauritius, and Roderigue, were almost the only islands of this description met with by the early circumnavigators of the Cape; and it is there that we find the last traces of this very remarkable bird, which disappeared, of course, from Bourbon and the Mauritius first, on account of their being more visited and finally colonized by the French; and lastly from Roderigue, an island extremely difficult of access, and without any safe bay or anchorage for shipping.

[15] We are aware that the destruction or total extinction of
any of the species of animals of contemporaneous creation
with man, is a point of much controversy among
philosophers.  The best reply to this doubt is the
repeated discovery of the fossil remains of animals
entirely different from the existing species; proving
their extinction to form a part of the scheme of creative
wisdom.

We obtain these particulars from a paper in the Magazine of Natural History,[16] by John V. Thompson, Esq.  F.L.S.  This gentleman, during a residence of some years in the above islands, in vain sought for some traces of the existence of the Dodo there; he discovered, however, a copy of the scarce and curious voyage of Leguat, who, and his companions, appear to have been the first inhabitants of Roderigue:  and from their journal he has translated the following account of the Dodo.

    [16] Vol. i. p. 442.

[Illustration:  The Dodo.]

“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.