SWIFTNESS has generally been considered the attribute of birds, but the Dodo appears never to have had any title to this distinction. Instead of exciting the idea of swiftness by its appearance, in the drawings that have been preserved of it, it strikes the imagination as a thing the most unwieldy and inactive of all nature. Its body is massive, almost round, and covered with grey feathers. It is just barely supported upon two short thick legs, like pillars; while its head and neck rise from it in a manner truly grotesque. The neck, thick and pursy, is joined to the head, which consists of two immense jaws, opening far beyond the eye. The Dodo formerly inhabited the Isle of France; but it has been long extinct--so long, indeed, that the very fact of its ever having existed at all has been a subject of dispute amongst naturalists and scientific men. A great deal of evidence, in the form of old pictures as well as in writings, has been brought forward to prove that the Dodo is not a fabulous bird, and its reality is now generally admitted. In fact, we have very reliable testimony that a single specimen was actually exhibited publicly in London in the year 1638. The Dodo was supposed by the earliest naturalists who described it, to be a kind of turkey, as in the flavour of its flesh it resembled that bird. Later naturalists supposed it to be a kind of swan, and this opinion was followed by the celebrated Buffon. Others thought it was a kind of vulture; and others, judging from the shortness of its wings, placed it in the ostrich tribe. Modern naturalists, however, having carefully examined the bones of the bird, which have been preserved, are of opinion that it was a gigantic pigeon. An entire specimen existed about a hundred years ago in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, but only part of the bird and one of the feet remain; there is also a foot preserved in the British Museum. There is a reference to this extinct species in Humboldt’s Cosmos. (See Bohn’s edition, vol. i. page 29, and a note on the Dodo, by Dr. Mantell, at the end of the volume.) The _Solitaire_ is another remarkable bird which was formerly found in the Mauritius and the adjoining islands, but which has now become extinct. [Illustration: THE RINGDOVE, CUSHAT, OR WOOD PIGEON, (_Columba palumbus_,)] IS the largest Pigeon found in our island, by which it may be distinguished from all others; its weight is about twenty ounces, its length eighteen inches, and its circumference about thirty. It is usually known as the Wood Pigeon. This bird is of a bluish grey colour, with the feathers of the sides of the neck tipped with white, forming several imperfect rings; the breed is common in Britain. Its habits are like those of other birds of the tribe, but it is so strongly attached to its native freedom, that all attempts to domesticate it, with a few rare exceptions, have hitherto proved ineffectual.