'a work of necessity and mercy,'
and might have been tolerated even on a Sunday, (between sermons,)
especially as naturalists have it still in their power to study the
habits of similar wild beasts, by no means yet extinct, in the
neighbouring countries of France and Germany."[61]

Perhaps the example of recent extinction most popularly known is that of
the Dodo, a very remarkable bird, which about two centuries ago existed
in considerable abundance, in the isles of Mauritius, Bourbon, and
Rodriguez. It was a rather large fowl, incapable of rising from the
ground, by reason of the imperfect development of its wings, of massive,
uncouth figure, predisposed to fatness, and noted for the sapidity of
its flesh. Two skulls and two unmatched feet of this strange bird are
preserved in European museums; and these shew that its nearest
affinities were with the pigeon-tribe, of which we know some species of
terrestrial habits, but none approaching this bird in its absolute
confinement to the earth.

In the reports of numerous voyagers who visited these islands from the
end of the fifteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth, we have
many accounts of the appearance and habits of this bird, evidently
sketched from the life. Some of the descriptions, as also the figures by
which they are illustrated, are quaint enough; as, for example, that
graphic sketch hit off by old Sir Thomas Herbert, who saw the bird in
his travels in 1634:--

"The Dodo," he says, "comes first to our description. Here and in
Dygarrois (and nowhere else that I c^d ever see or heare of) is
generated the Dodo. (A Portuguize name it is, and has reference to
her simplenes) a bird which for shape and rareness might be call'd
a Ph{oe}nix (wer't in Arabia); her body is round and extreame fat,
her slow pace begets that corpulencie; few of them weigh lesse than
fifty pound: better to the eye than the stomack: greasie appetites
may perhaps commend them, but, to the indifferently curious,
nourishment, but prove offensive. Let's take her picture: her
visage darts forth melancholy, as sensible of nature's injurie in
framing so great and massive a body to be directed by such small
and complementall wings, as are unable to hoise her from the
ground, serving only to prove her a bird; which otherwise might be
doubted of: her head is variously drest, the one halfe hooded with
downy blackish feath