With the view to test the tradition recorded by Edwards as to the date and origin of the painting of the Dodo in the British Museum, I took a copy of the outline of the bird and laid upon it outlines of the bones of the Dodo subsequently to be described, as shown in Plate III., and thus obtained proof that the painting truly represented the natural size and shape of the _Didus ineptus_, and had no doubt been “drawn in Holland from the living bird[16].” From the date of the first landing of the Dutch on the Island of Mauritius, in 1598, to their colonization of it in 1644, their ships frequently, perhaps annually, visited that island, and, as recorded by most of the writers quoted by Broderip, and testified by Van der Hagen, in 1607[17], their crews feasted on Tortoises, Dodos, Doves, and other game, and also salted the Tortoises and Dodos for consumption during the voyage to the spice-islands of the Indian Archipelago. It is highly probable that more than one of the strange birds of Prince Maurice’s Island would be brought alive to Holland, and we know that a specimen was brought from that country for exhibition in London in the year 1638. It is certain that through the attacks of man, and those of the dogs, cats, and swine introduced by the Dutch into the Mauritius, the slow and heavy flightless Dodos were extirpated, probably before Leguat’s visit to the island in 1693. The French colonists, who succeeded the Dutch in 1712, seem not to have found any Dodos remaining in the island; their descendants and successors have preserved no traditions of the living bird; and Baron Grant, who resided in the Mauritius from 1740 to 1760, expressly states that no such bird was to be found there at that time[18]. Mr. Broderip refers, in his History of the Dodo, to the notice by Adam Olearius, in 1666, of the head of that bird in the museum of the Duke of Gottorp. This specimen was most unexpectedly discovered by Professor Reinhardt in the Museum of Natural History at Copenhagen under the following circumstances:—“In the summer of 1840 I happened to search through a box wherein different natural-history objects were stored, which had been presented by the ‘Kunstkammer’ to the Royal Natural History Museum, and on this occasion I found a very large bird-cranium, which attracted my attention partly through its size, partly through its unusual and peculiar shape, and by a further examination and comparison with the authenticated representations of the Dodo, I became persuaded that it must have belonged to that remarkable bird.