Dodo

an extinct bird of Mauritius. Accounts by Portuguese and Dutch navigators testify that it survived as late as 1681. Further accounts go to show that it and other animals peculiar to the island were destroyed by the numerous descendants of some hogs turned loose by sailors. No complete specimen of the dodo is known. A few scrappy bits of the bird, a foot here and a head there, have been supplemented by a number of bones found of late in a marsh, in Mauritius, from which a tolerably complete skeleton has been made up for the British Museum. The dodo had short, ill set legs, a clumsy, globular body, possibly twice as large as that of a goose, an enormous mouth, and a large bill terminating in a hook. It was heavily feathered with ashen gray plumage, but was practically wingless and had a short upcurled tail. In spite of its awkward build, naturalists classify it with the pigeon and the dove. A black, heavily built, hawk-bill pigeon of the Island of Samoa, called the tooth-billed pigeon, from notches in its bill, is considered the nearest living relative of the dodo. The island is not large, and this pigeon is likely to become extinct.