But while the creature in question,--we mean the feathered biped--has been continuously presented to view in those "vain repetitions" which unfortunately form the mass of our information in all would-be popular works on natural history, we had actually long been at a stand-still in relation to its essential attributes--the few competent authorities who had given out their opinion upon this, as many thought, stereotyped absurdity, being so disagreed among themselves as to make confusion worse confounded. The case, indeed, seemed desperate; and had it not been that we always entertained a particular regard for old Clusius, (of whom by-and-by,) and could not get over the fact that a Dodo's head existed in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and a Dodo's foot in the British Museum, London, we would willingly have indulged the thought that the entire Dodo was itself a dream. But, shaking off the cowardly indolence which would seek to shirk the investigation of so great a question, let us now inquire into a piece of ornithological biography, which seemed so singularly to combine the familiar with the fabulous. Thanks to an accomplished and persevering naturalist of our own day--one of the most successful and assiduous inquirers of the younger generation--we have now all the facts, and most of the fancies, laid before us in a splendid royal quarto volume, just published, with numerous plates, devoted to the history and illustration of the "Dodo and its Kindred." It was, in truth, the latter term that cheered our heart, and led us again towards a subject which had previously produced the greatest despondency; for we had always, though most erroneously, fancied that the great misformed lout of our _Three Hundred Animals_ was all alone in the wide world, unable to provide for himself, (and so, fortunately, without a family,) and had never, in truth, had either predecessors or posterity. Mr Strickland, however, has brought together the _disjecta membra_ of a family group, showing not only fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, but cousins, and kindred of all degrees. Their sedate and somewhat sedentary mode of life is probably to be accounted for, not so much by their early habits as their latter end. Their legs are short, their wings scarcely existant, but they are prodigiously large and heavy in the hinder-quarters; and organs of flight would have been but a vain thing for safety, as they could not, in such wooded countries as these creatures inhabited, have been made commensurate with the uplifting of such solid bulk, placed so far behind that centre of gravity where other wings are worked. We can now sit down in Mr Strickland's company, to discuss the subject, not only tranquilly, but with a degree of cheerfulness which we have not felt for many a day: thanks to his kindly consideration of the Dodo and "its kindred."