We confess that, setting aside various other unconformable features in the structure of the Dodo, the fact, testified by various authorities, of its swallowing stones, and having stones in its gizzard, for the mechanical triturition of its food, (a peculiarity unknown among the raptorial order,) is sufficient to bar the above view, supported though it be by the opinion of our most distinguished living anatomist. In a recent memoir by Professor J. F. Brandt (of which an abstract is given in the _Bulletin de la Class. Phys. de l'Acad. Imp. de St Petersburg_, vol. viii. No. 3) we have the following statement:-- "The Dodo, a bird provided with divided toes and cursorial feet, is best classed in the order of the Waders, among which it appears, from its many peculiarities, (most of which, however, are quite referable to forms in this order,) to be an anomalous link connecting several groups,--a link which, for the reasons above given, inclines towards the ostriches, and especially also towards the pigeons." We doubt the direct affinity to any species of the grallatorial order, an order which contains the cursorial or swift-running birds, very dissimilar in their prevailing habits to anything we know of the sluggish and sedentary Dodo. Professor Brandt may be regarded as having mistaken analogy for affinity; and, in Mr Strickland's opinion, he has in this instance wandered from the true method of investigation, in his anxiety to discover a link connecting dissevered groups. What then is, or rather was, the Dodo? The majority of inquirers have no doubt been influenced, though unconsciously, by its colossal size, and have consequently sought its actual analogies only among such huge species as the ostrich, the vulture, and the albatross. But the range in each order is often enormous, as, for example, between the _Falco cærulescens_, or finch falcon of Bengal, an accipitrine bird not bigger than a sparrow, and an eagle of the largest size; or between the swallow-like stormy petrel and the gigantic pelican of the wilderness. It appears that Professor J. T. Rheinhardt of Copenhagen, who rediscovered the cranium of the Gottorf Museum, was the first to indicate the direct relationship of the Dodo to the _pigeons_. He has recently been engaged in a voyage round the world, but it is known that, before he left Copenhagen in 1845, he had called the attention of his correspondents, both in Sweden and Denmark, to "the striking affinity which exists between this extinct bird and the pigeons, especially the Trerons." The Columbine view is that taken up, and so admirably illustrated, by Mr Strickland, the most recent as well as the best biographer of the Dodo. He refers to the great strength and curvature of bill exhibited by several groups of the tropical fruit-eating pigeons, and adds: