One of these rules decrees, that any specimen in a bad condition should not be totally destroyed; but any hard parts, such as the head, horns, or feet, should be put away in a closet. This head is still in tolerable preservation. The singular form of the beak and nostrils, the bare skin of the face, combined with the partly feathered head, which the old writers compared to a hood, are still strikingly apparent. Of the history of the leg in the British Museum, little is known. It formerly belonged to the Royal Society, and is in all probability the same that is mentioned in the catalogue of a museum that was offered for sale in London by a person named Hubert, in 1664. It is certain that the leg at Oxford, and that at London, did not belong to the same bird; for though they are right and left, and their perfect agreement in character proves their identity of species, yet one is nearly an inch longer than the other. The head at Copenhagen was described by Olearius as early as 1666, in the catalogue of the museum of the Duke of Schleswig at Gottorf. In 1720, that museum was removed to Copenhagen, but it was not till within the last few years, when the history of the dodo excited so strongly the attention of naturalists, that this head was successfully sought for, and disinterred from a mass of rubbish, by Dr Reinhardt. Many have been the conflicting opinions among naturalists with respect to the class of birds the dodo should be placed in. Space will not permit us to enter into these discussions. Suffice it to say, it is generally agreed now that the dodo was a gigantic, short-winged, fruit-eating pigeon. The English naturalist, Mr Strickland, who has devoted an amazing amount of labour and research to the elucidation of this mysterious question, and Dr Reinhardt of Copenhagen, were the first who referred the dodo to the pigeon tribe, having arrived almost simultaneously, by two distinct chains of reasoning, at the same conclusion; and their opinion is corroborated by a dissection that was lately made of part of the head at Oxford.