340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bird, the size of a swan, has a round tail, covered with two or three 

 curly tufts, has no wings, but instead of them there are three or four 

 black tufts : of these birds we caught a certain number. . . . We cooked 

 the bird ; it was so leathery that we could not boil it enough, but we 

 ate it half raw." 



In 1601 two Dutch squadrons, one commanded by Hovmansz, the 

 other by Van Heemskerk, sailed together from the East Indies on their 

 return to Europe. The vessels soon parted, those of Heemskerk an- 

 chored at the island of Mauritius, and this time the crews found the 

 dodo remarkably good eating. They probably understood better than 

 Van Neck's men how to prepare them, and those they killed were per- 

 haps fatter or younger. They ate a great number, and salted others 

 down for the remainder of their voyage. Other birds abounded in the 

 island, but were less easily caught than the great dodos, which had no 

 power to fly, and no other means of defense than their huge bills. In 

 the years following, Dutch navigators often landed at the Mauritius, 

 and the dodos, killed with clubs by the sailors, always furnished a 

 large part of the crews' j)rovision ; they worked zealously for the de- 

 struction of the poor birds, unable to escape pursuit. The Englishman, 

 Sir Thomas Herbert, visiting the island in 1627, found the dodo still 

 there ; and Francis Gauche, a French sailor, author of the narrative of 

 a voyage to Madagascar, touching at Mauritius in 1638, also saw there 

 the dodo, or, as he called it, the nazar-bird, which builds its nest from 

 a heap of grasses, on the ground. About the same date, a living dodo 

 was exhibited in London : fortunately, artists took the opportunity to 

 draw from nature the likeness of this strange bird, and the Dutch 

 painter, Koelandt Savery, in particular, depicted it under various 

 aspects. In this way the general appearance of this extinct species 

 has been preserved for us. After the death of the one brought alive 

 to England, it was stuffed, and at last found a place in the museum 

 founded at Oxford by Ashmole. 



Up to 1644 Mauritius Island, pretty fi:equently visited by naviga- 

 tors, had remained unpeopled ; but in that year the Dutch founded a 

 colony in it. Such an establishment of course brought about the ex- 

 tinction of the dodo, in which the dogs, cats, and pigs, introduced into 

 the country, no doubt did their part by eating the young and the 

 eggs. The last evidence of the dodo's existence dates in 1681; it is 

 given by the log of an English sailor named Harry, aboard a vessel 

 that wintered at Mauritius, homeward bound from India. In this 

 document, preserved among the manuscripts of the British Museum, 

 the dodo is mentioned as having very tough flesh. And here the first 

 part of the strange creature's history ends. 



In 1693 the French naturalist Leguat pursued for several months 

 an exploration of Mauritius Island. He describes a number of animals 

 seen in the country, but he neither met with the dodo, nor did any 

 one speak of it to him. The bird was extinct, and all attempts to 



