specimens of

WADING BIRDS.

Most interesting families of birds are included in this order. First,
there are the Ostriches, which are the envy of all people cursed with
weak digestive powers; then there is the Dodo, with its mysterious and
half-told history; also the Bustards, the Coursers, the Plovers, the
Cranes, the Storks, the Sandpipers, the Snipes, &c. These varieties of
wading birds are carefully classed, and represented in the compartment
of the gallery to which the visitor has now worked his way. First in
the order of arrangement stand the ostriches, occupying the cases
(107, 109). Some naturalists refuse to class ostriches with the order
of wading birds, and elevate them to the dignity of a distinct order,
Cursores, or runners; but in the museum, as the visitor will perceive,
they are at the head of the wading order. Unscientific people know
more about the ostrich than about most other birds of foreign climes.
Few people have not heard that the egg of the ostrich weighs three
pounds--that the sun is the bird's Cantelo--that he has only two toes
to each foot--that he sometimes exceeds six feet in height--and that
it would not be an act of madness to back a stout specimen, for speed,
against an average horse. The digestion of the ostrich has been
considerably strengthened in the minds of unscientific persons by
imaginative travellers; the fact being that these birds live upon
vegetable food, occasionally swallowing stones, or a bit of iron, in
aid of that digestion which has been so misrepresented. In the cases
before the visitor are the African ostrich, and his relations, the
Australian cassowary, and the American emu--all characterised by the
absence of a hind toe. Having noticed these fine birds, the visitor
will be anxious to learn something of the mysterious case (108), which
contains a foot, the cast of a skull, and a painting. Here he sees all
that has yet been traced of the extinct dodo, a bird which is believed
to have existed in vast numbers up to a recent period, chiefly on the
Bourbon and Mauritius islands. The painting is said to be an authentic
Dutch performance, taken from the living bird at the time when the
Cape of Good Hope was doubled by adventurous men heated with
exaggerated notions of the exhaustless wealth of the Indies. Its
precise position among birds has not been finally assigned. It appears
to have been incapable of flight, to have had a vulture's head, and
the foot of a common fowl.