By some lucky accident, however, a small portion of "this last descendant of an ancient race," as Mr Strickland terms it, escaped the clutches of the destroyers. "The head and one of the feet were saved from the flames, and are still preserved in the Ashmolean Museum."[20] [20] The scientific value of these remnants, Mr Strickland informs us, has been lately much increased by skilful dissection. Dr Acland, the lecturer in anatomy, has divided the skin of the cranium down the mesial line, and, by removing it from the left side, the entire osteological structure of this extraordinary skull is exposed to view, while on the other side the external covering remains undisturbed. The solitary foot was formerly covered by decomposed integuments, and presented few external characters. These have been removed by Dr Kidd, the professor of medicine, who has made an interesting preparation of both the osseous and tendinous structures.--See _The Dodo and its Kindred_, p. 33. Let us now retrace our steps, for the sake of taking up, very briefly, the history of the other known remnants of this now extinct species. Among the printed books of the Ashmolean Museum, there is a small tract, of which the second edition (the first is without date) is entitled, "A Catalogue of many natural rarities, with great industry, cost, and thirty years' travel in foreign countries, collected by Robert Hubert, _alias_ Forges, gent. and sworn servant to his majesty; and daily to be seen at the place formerly called the Music House, near the west end of St Paul's Church," 12mo, London, 1665. At page 11 is the following entry:--"A legge of a Dodo, a great heavy bird that cannot fly: it is a bird of the Maurcius island." This specimen is supposed to be that which afterwards passed into the possession of the Royal Society, is recorded in their catalogue of _Natural and Artificial Curiosities_, published by Grew in 1681, and is now in the British Museum. It is somewhat larger than the Ashmolean foot, and, from its excellent state of preservation, finely exhibits the external characters of the toes and tarsus. In Olearus's catalogue of the museum at Gottorf, (the seat of the Dukes of Schleswig, and recently a less easy one than we have known it,) of which the first edition was published in 1666, there is the following notice of a Dodo's head:-- "No. 5 is the head of a foreign bird, which Clusius names _Gallus peregrinus_, Mirenberg _Cygnus cucullatus_, and the Dutch walghvögel, from the disgust which they are said to have taken to its hard flesh. The Dutch seem to have first discovered this bird in the island of Mauritius; and it is stated to have no wings, but in place of them two winglets, like the emeu and the penguins."--(P. 25.)