Jan. 1, 1867.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



in the pages of Science Gossip in the hope of 

 inducing some other naturalists or hunters to give 

 us their theories, or experiences— which is much 

 better— about bears and their cubs. 



I left the baby Polars with a hearty wish, that 

 during their babyhood " good digestion might wait 

 on appetite, and health on both."* 



John Keast Lokd, F.Z.S. 



THE WHITE DODO. 



|TT is an interesting though melancholy matter of 

 -*- observation to the natural historian and the 

 philosopher, to witness the gradual diminution and 

 ultimate extinction of various living races from the 

 surface of the globe. Man himself, the lord of the 

 creation, is not exempt from this destiny ; but in 

 some one or other of the numerous branches of the 

 human family is obliged to yield to the mighty and 

 various (though, perhaps, little regarded) causes 

 which are producing such striking results. The 

 tribes of Red Indians which inhabited Newfound- 

 land have entirely disappeared within the last fifty 

 years, and are now only known in the records of the 

 past ; while their co-genitors of the adjacent conti- 

 nent are as gradually, though as surely, diminishing 

 before the progress of the backwoodsman of the 

 "far west." In Australia, also, the same results 

 are visible ; for her aboriginal inhabitants are yearly 

 decreasing, while in Tasmania not one remains. 



But it is not our present purpose to enter on the 

 discussion of the changes which have 'affected the 

 human family. In the lower orders of animals these 

 changes are equally marked, and their results, 

 perhaps, are the more striking because they are 

 entirely effected by external and unnoticed agencies ; 

 and it is seldom, until a species has become nearly 

 extinct, that our attention is called to the matter. 

 Nor need we go far to seek for these changes, for 

 in England itself they are rapidly going on. 

 Macaulay, speaking of the state of the country in 

 the seventeenth century, says, " The red deer were 

 then as common in Gloucestershire and Hampshire 

 as they now are among the Grampian Hills. On 

 one occasion, Queen Anne on her way to Portsmouth 

 saw a herd of no less than five hundred. The wild 

 bull, with his white mane, was still to be found 

 wandering in a few of the; southern forests. The 

 badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side 

 of every hill where the copsewood grew thick. The 

 wild cats were frequently heard by night wailing 

 round the lodges of the rangers of Whittlebury and 

 Needwood. The yellow-breasted marten was still 

 pursued in Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reputed 

 inferior only to that of the sable. Sea eagles, 

 measuring more than nine feet between the extre- 



«.! ^l^ sh w ^ s not real >zed.' Since the above went to press 

 the baby bears have died. 



mities of the wings, preyed on^ fish along the coast 

 of Norfolk. On all the downs from the British 

 Channel to Yorkshire, bustards strayed in troops of 

 fifty or sixty, and were often hunted with greyhounds. 

 The marshes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire 

 were covered during some months of every year by 

 immense crowds of cranes. Some of these races 

 the progress of cultivation has extirpated. Of 

 others, the numbers are so much diminished that 

 men crowd to gaze at a specimen as at a Bengal 

 tiger or a polar bear."* The most remarkable 

 illustration of the changes which have been men- 

 tioned is that singular bird the Dodo {Didus inept us), 

 which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was 

 numerous in the islands of Mauritius, Rodriguez, 

 and Bourbon, but is now totally extinct. 



Indeed until very recently, a few disjointed and 

 decaying relics in the British Museum, and in the 

 Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, a painting in oil in 

 the former, and a few rude pictorial representations 

 in the journals of the early Dutch voyagers, were 

 nearly all that remained to attest their past ex- 

 istence. The disappearance of this species is the 

 more remarkable from its having been comparatively 

 recent, for from one of the Sloane MSS. in the 

 British Museum, there is every reason to believe 

 that, in 1639, a living dodo was exhibited in England. 

 Yet until the discovery of the head and foot in a 

 lumber-room in the Museum at Oxford, so myste- 

 rious and sudden had been its extinction from the 

 islands where it was alleged to have been found, 

 that it was almost considered to have been a fabu- 

 lous creature. The admirable memoir by Dr. Mel- 

 ville, and the late Mr. Strickland, has, however, 

 thrown much light on [the subject, proving not only 

 their existence, but that they .belonged, notwith- 

 standing their large size and unwieldly flightless 

 character, to the family of the Columbian, or 

 Pigeons, and somewhat allied to the genus Treron. 

 The MS. note to which we have alluded, is by Sir 

 H.'Lestrange, and is as follows :—" About 1639, as 

 I walked London streets, I saw7.the picture of a 

 strange fowle hong out upon a cloth, and myself, 

 with one or two more in company, went in to see it. 

 It was kept in a chamber, and was a great ' s fowle, 

 somewhat bigger than the largest turkey cock, and 

 so legged and footed, but stouter and thicker, and 

 of a more erected shape, coloured before like the 

 breast of a young cock fesan, and on the back of 

 dunn or deare colour. The keeper 1 called it a 

 Dodo." It seems most probable that this very bird 

 was bought by Tradescant, and on its death was 

 placed in his museum, for when the latter was pre- 

 sented to the University of Oxford, by Ashmole, it 

 contained a perfect stuffed Dodo. There it re- 

 mained, having become decayed from neglect, until 

 January 8, 1755, on which day it was ordered by the 



History of England." Vol. 1, p. 312. 



