But there is not the least doubt of its being a fact, for in the Museum in London there is a painting said to have been taken from the living bird; there is also a leg and a plaster cast of the head placed near the painting, which naturalists have determined could not have belonged to any other animal known, from their peculiar construction; there is also another foot and the head from which the cast was taken, preserved in the Museum of the University of Oxford, being the remains of an entire specimen which was kept in the collection of curiosities made by Elias Ashmole, Esq. till it rotted. This is representation of these two valuable relics.
The account of the removal of the bones was entered in the records of the University, and the date is the 1st January, 1755.
More recently some of the bones have been found in the Mauritius, and have been sent to Paris, where I have heard they may be seen now.
It seems to have been the most unwieldy and inactive bird in existence, and to have held nearly the same kind of place among feathered animals as the sloth does among beasts. The body was very massive, and almost round, and seemed to be stuck upon two short thick legs like pillars. The tail was strangely out of its place, according to the usual form of birds; and two little caricatures of wings were hung upon its great blank sides. A thick pursy neck supported the head, which consisted of two enormous chaps that opened far behind the eyes. You will best understand the form of the bill by looking at the cut copied from the painting which I mentioned before, and you may there see how like a monk's cowl the feathers of his head looked.
Some of the Dutch who met with this bird in its own country called it the nauseous bird, and declared that its flesh was intolerably disagreeable to the taste; while others asserted that it was very good eating, and that about three Dodos would feast a hundred men. But whatever may have been the quality of the flesh, I do not believe what the latter said of its quantity, for the head and leg which I have seen, and which appear to have belonged to a full grown bird, are not very much larger than those of a swan.
However this is now a question which of course will never be certainly decided, as there are no more of them to be eaten. It appears that, like the beavers and wolves in England, the progress of man and cultivation deprived them of their sources of sustenance.
If we may judge of what his character was, from his appearance, he must have been a silly, voracious creature, with hardly any power of resistance or flight. However, like all the rest of God's works, he was no doubt adapted for the circumstances in which he was placed, and had enough means of enjoyment, to make it well worth his while to live as long as he could.