“‘In the Island of Mauritius in the East Indies, as also in sundry other places, likewise in the West Indies, men find birds as big as swans, which they call _Dod-aerses_ or _Drontes_. They have large heads, upon the top of which is a skin (a little skin-membrane) in the shape of a cap (little cap). They have no wings, but in the place of them there are three or four black feathers; and there where the tail should be, there are instead four or five curling plumes of a greyish colour. They have a thick round rump, and from this it appears they got the name of Dod-aerses. In their stomachs they have commonly a stone as big as a fist; this stone is of a brown-grey colour, and full of little holes and hollows, but as hard as the grey Bentemer stone. The boat’s crew of _Jacob van Neck_ called them Walgh-vogels (surfeit birds), because they could not cook them till they were done, or make them tender; or because they were able to get so many turtle-doves which had a much more pleasant flavour, so that they took a disgust to these birds. Likewise it is said that three or four of these birds are enough to afford a whole ship’s company one full meal. Indeed they salted down some of them, and carried them with them on the voyage.’ “At the top of the page in which this passage commences is printed ‘_Van de Dodaersen_.’ And immediately below it and above the description is a copper-plate of the bird, superscribed ‘_Dod-aers_,’ in engraved italics. “The engraving of the bird is identical in position and accessories with the woodcut given by Mr. Strickland; but the sharpness of the work and the nature of the plate make the whole much clearer. The object at which the Dodo is looking, as if about to feed, is manifestly a testaceous mollusk with a turbinated shell, and between that and the raised foot of the bird is a half-buried spiny _Echinus_. “The locality on which the Dodo is walking has the appearance of a strand which the tide has left dry. “Wolfgangh’s account confirms the opinion which I hazarded in the article ‘Dodo’ in the ‘Penny Cyclopædia.’ “‘As to the stories of the disgusting quality of the flesh of the bird found and eaten by the Dutch, they will weigh but little in the scale when we take the expression to be, what it really was, indicative of a comparative preference for the turtle-doves there found, after feeding on Dodos _usque ad nauseam_. “Always partridges” has become proverbial, and we find from Lawson how a repetition of the most delicious food palls. “We cooked our supper,” says that traveller, “but having neither bread nor salt, our fat turkeys began to be loathsome to us; although we were never wanting of a good appetite, yet a continuance of one diet made us weary;” and again, “By the way our guide killed more turkeys, and two polecats, which he eat, esteeming them before fat turkeys.”’