"The bird in question," says Mr Vigors, "from every account which we have of its economy, and from the appearance of its head and foot, is decidedly gallinaceous; and, from the insufficiency of its wings for the purposes of flight, it may with equal certainty be pronounced to be of the _Struthious_ structure. But the foot has a strong hind-toe, and, with the exception of its being more robust, in which character it still adheres to the Struthionidæ, it corresponds to the Linnæan genus _Crax_, that commences the succeeding family. The bird thus becomes osculant, and forms a strong point of junction between those two contiguous groups."--_Linn. Trans._ xiv. 484. M. de Blainville (in _Nouv. Ann. du Mus._ iv. 24,) contests this opinion by various arguments, which we cannot here report, and concludes that the Dodo is a raptorial bird, allied to the vultures. Mr Broderip, in his article before referred to, sums up the discussion as follows:-- "If the picture in the British Museum, and the cut in Bontius, be faithful representations of a creature then living, to make such a bird of prey--a vulture, in the ordinary acceptation of the term--would be to set all the usual laws of adaptation at defiance. A vulture without wings! How was it to be fed? And not only without wings, but necessarily slow and heavy in progression on its clumsy feet. The _Vulturidæ_ are, as we know, among the most active agents for removing the decomposing animal remains in tropical and inter-tropical climates, and they are provided with a prodigal development of wing, to waft them speedily to the spot tainted by the corrupt incumbrance. But no such powers of wing would be required by a bird appointed to clear away the decaying and decomposing masses of a luxuriant tropical vegetation--a kind of vulture for vegetable impurities, so to speak--and such an office would not be by any means inconsistent with comparative slowness of pedestrian motion." Professor Owen, doubtless one of our greatest authorities, inclines towards an affinity with the vultures, and considers the Dodo as an extremely modified form of the raptorial order. "Devoid of the power of flight, it could have had small chance of obtaining food by preying upon the members of its own class; and, if it did not exclusively subsist on dead and decaying organised matter, it most probably restricted its attacks to the class of reptiles, and to the littoral fishes, _Crustacea_, &c., which its well-developed back-toe and claw would enable it to seize, and hold with a firm gripe."--_Transactions of the Zoological Society_, iii. p. 331.