"In 1903 I published a list including sight records, one as late as May, 1902; this latter is possibly open to doubt, but the ones I gave for 1900 are, I feel confident, correct, as the birds were seen more than once and by different observers. For all practical purposes, the close of the Nineteenth Century saw the final extinction of the Passenger Pigeon in a wild state, and there remained only the small flock, numbering in 1903 not more than a dozen, that had been bred in captivity by Prof. C. O. Whitman, of Chicago; these birds are the descendants of a single pair, and have long ago ceased to breed. It was in an effort to obtain fresh blood for this flock that I started a newspaper enquiry that brought many replies, none of which could be substantiated as records of the Passenger Pigeon, and many referred to the Mourning Dove. I am aware that there has been lately wide-spread and persistent rumours of the return of the pigeons, but no rumour has borne investigation, and I feel that Prof. Whitman's small flock, now reduced (in 1906) to five birds, are the last representatives of a species around whose disappearance mystery and fable will always gather." {171} FAMILY DIDIDAE. (L.) Includes very large and massively-built forms, agreeing with the _Columbidae_ in the truncation of the angle of the mandible, but with the extremity of the cranial rostrum strongly hooked. They were totally incapable of flight, the wing-bones being small, the carina of the sternum aborted, and the caracoidal grooves shallow and separated from one another. Two genera: _Didus_ and _Pezophaps_. DIDUS LINN. Skull with a very large and deeply hooked rostrum, and the nasal and maxillary processes of the praemaxilla converging anteriorly; the front region inflated into a sub-conical prominence of cancellous tissue. Neck and feet shorter than in the succeeding genus. Delto-pectoral crest of humerus distinct. Two species: _Didus cucullatus_ and _Didus solitarius_. {172} DIDUS CUCULLATUS (L.) DODO. (PLATES 24, 24A, 24B, 24C.) _Walchvoghel_ Van Neck, Voy., p. 7, pl. 2 (1601). _Walchvögel_ De Bry, Orient. Ind. pt. VIII, t. 11 (1606). _Gallinaceus gallus peregrinus_ Clusius, Exot. Libr. V p. 99 t. 100 (1605). _Dod-eersen_ or _Valgh-vogel_ Herbert's travels 1st ed. (1634) t. page 212. _Cygnus cucullatus_ Nieremberg, Nat p. 231 (with fig. ex. Clus.) (1635). _Dronte_ Bontius, Ind. Orient t. p. 70 (1658). _Raphus_ Moehring, Av. gen. 57 (1752). _Dodo_ Edwards, Glean. Nat Hist. III p. 179 pl. 296 (1757). _Struthio cucullatus_ Linn., S. N. I p. 155 No. 4 (1758). _Didus ineptus_ Linn., S. N. I p. 267 No. 1 (1766).