Notices respecting New Books. 469 



vogel, Dodo, Dodar, Dodaersen, Dronte, besides various specific 

 names under the genera Cygnus, Gallus, Raphus, Struthio and Didus. 

 In about a century from its first discovery, the Dodo had become 

 extirpated through the direct and indirect agency of man : — 



" In 1644 the Dutch first colonised the island Mauritius ; and it is pro- 

 bable that these gigantic fowls, deprived of flight, slow of foot, and useful 

 for food, were speedily diminished in number, and finally exterminated by 

 the thoughtless rapacity of the early colonists. Their destruction would be 

 further hastened, or might be mainly caused, by dogs, cats and swine, which 

 accompany man in his migrations, and are speedily naturalized in the forests. 



." That the destruction of the Dodos was completed by 1693, 



may be inferred from the narrative of Leguat, who in that year remained 

 several months in Mauritius, and enumerates its animal productions at some 

 length, but makes no mention whatever of Dodos." — P. 27. 



In the second series of evidences, the pictorial, we find five oil 

 paintings described as extant in different cities of Europe ; two of 

 which are in this country, one of them in the British Museum, the 

 other in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. " Three of the five pic- 

 tures bear the name of Roland Savery, an eminent Dutch animal 

 painter of the beginning of the seventeenth century, and one is by 

 John Savery, the nephew of Roland." — P. 28. As to the fifth paint- 

 ing, or the one in the British Museum, it is said, " Unfortunately 

 there is neither name nor date upon the picture ; but from the style 

 of execution, and the identity of the design with the picture next to 

 be noticed (that in the Royal collection at the Hague), it may be 

 attributed to one of the two Saverys." — P. 29. These pictures are 

 justly claimed in support of the historical evidence, which is itself 

 partly pictorial from the numerous engravings introduced into the 

 works of several of the earlier writers ; and which, though for the 

 most part rude, and in some degree discordant, are highly corrobo- 

 rative of the accompanying written evidence, and also of the inde- 

 pendent pictures under consideration. 



Of the third kind of evidence, the real or anatomical, there is 

 but a very small number of specimens to appeal to, — a foot in the 

 British Museum, a head and a foot in the Ashmolean Museum, and 

 a mutilated head in the public Museum at Copenhagen, are all the 

 known relics of this extraordinary bird. 



Few and imperfect, however, as these latter sources of evidence 

 unfortunately are, we shall see that they possess well-defined cha- 

 racters indelibly stamped upon them, by the deciphering of which 

 the Dodo, with all its strange anomalies, has been assigned a fixed 

 position in its class, after having been tossed about among various 

 families, none of which were content to receive it with much cor- 

 diality. 



It is not a little startling (so apt are we to be misled by size and 

 general configuration) to find this uncouth and unwieldy bird, after 

 having been deemed too inactive for the Raptores, too awkward for 

 the Gallinacece, and too slow for the Struthionidee, at last settling 

 down among the graceful, gentle, and volatile Columbidee. Yet such 

 is the conclusion formed by a minute examination of the anatomical 



