The dodo - Didus ineptus - generally associated with the Struthionidae, is the latest link which seems to have utterly dropped from this chain of being. That such a bird as the dodo existed, although every picture of it extant seems somewhat apocryphal, there is no reason to doubt; and the less so since the publication of the evidence compiled by the writer of the article"Dodo" in the Penny Cyclopaedia. In this article the reader will find a vast amount of testimony to the effect that one if not two species of this bird were known to our earlier voyagers, and that not only stuffed but living specimens were brought to Europe during the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries.

Admitting then the former existence of the dodo in the island of Madagascar, and perhaps in some of the adjacent regions of Africa, all that now remains of this genus are a few imperfect pictures, a preserved foot in the British museum, and a head in the Ashmolean museum at Oxford. It would appear, however, from the records of the latter museum, that an entire specimen formerly existed in it, which was allowed to decay, and its remains to be lost, with the exeption of the head.

The opinion of the most eminent naturalists concur in regarding the head and foot as different from those of any existing bird, and as corresponding in character withe commonly received figure of the dodo. With reference to the diversity of opinion as to the place the dodo ought to hold in systems of classifications, we may only notice that, though its head would favour the opinion that it was allied to birds of prey (vulturidae), and the foot to that of the gallinaceae, still its general contour, the absence of wings, and character of the feathers, all point its alliance with the Struthious family.

In most families there is generally some genus possessing a peculiar type which connects it with another family, and the Struthious classification of the dodo iy by no means invalidated, because it possesses a connecting type with the rasores on the one hand, or with the vulturidae on the other.

It will be remembered that the ostrich has only two toes; the rhea, emeu, and cassowary three, and the apteryx and dodo four.