The Dodo, indigenous to Mauritius, should be placed in the first rank of extinct birds. "It was observed by Vasco de Gama, who visited this island in 1497. At the end of the seventeenth century some of them still existed." Credit: Cuppy Ph.D., Hazlitt Alva Beauties and Wonders of Land and Sea (Springfield: Mast, Crowell & Kirkpatrick, 1895) 280; Copyright: 2009, Florida Center for Instructional Technology, University of Southern Florida