DODO 157 



Henceforth Dutch narrators, though several times mentioning 

 the bird, fail to supply any important fact in its history. Their 

 navigators, however, were not idle, and found work for their 

 naturalists and painters. Clusius says that in 1605 he saw at 

 Pauw's House in Leyden a Dodo's foot,^ which he minutely de- 

 scribes. Of late years a copy of Clusius's work has been discovered 

 in the high school of Utrecht, in which is pasted an original di'aw- 

 ing by Van de Venne, reproduced in fac-simile by Herr H. C. 

 Millies in 1868, and supersci"ibed "Vera effigies huius avis Walgh- 

 vogel (quae & a nautis Dodaers propter foedam posterioris partis 

 crassitiem nuncupatur) qualis viua Amsterodamum perlata est ex 

 Insula Mauritii. Anno M.DC.XXVI." Now a good many paint- 

 ings of the Dodo by a celebrated artist named Eoelandt Savery, 

 who was born at Courtray in 1576 and died in 1639, have long 

 been known, and it has always been understood that these Avere 

 drawn from the life. Proof, however, of the limning of a living 

 Dodo in Holland at that period had hitherto been wanting. There 

 can now be no longer any doubt of the fact ; and the paintings by 

 this artist of the Dodo at Berlin and Vienna — dated respectively 

 1626 and 1628 — as well as the picture by Goiemare, belonging to 

 the Duke of Northumberland, at Sion House, dated 1627, may be 

 Avith greater plausibility than ever considered portraits of a captive 

 bird. It is even probable that this was not the first example 

 Avhich had sat to a painter in Eiirope. In the private library of 

 the late Emperor Francis of Austria is a series of pictures of 

 various animals, supposed to be by the Dutch artist Hoefnagel, 

 who was born about 1545. One of these represents a Dodo, and, 

 if there be no mistake in Von Frauenfeld's ascription, it must 

 almost certainly have been painted before 1626, while there is 

 reason to think that the original may have been kept in the 

 vivarium of the then Emperor Rudolf II, and that the portion of 

 a Dodo's head, which Avas found in the Museum at Prague aboiit 

 1850, belonged to this example. The other pictures by Eoelandt 

 Savery, of which may be mentioned that at the Hague, that in the 



minor, of which the Dutchmen were remiuded by the round stern and tail dimin- 

 ished to a tuft that characterized the Dodo. Tlie same learned autliority 

 suggests that Dodo is a corruj^tion of Dodaars, but, as will j^resently be seen, 

 we herein think him mistaken. The latter of the two names, which has been 

 naturalized in France as Bronte, as Dr. Jentink has kindly suggested to me, may 

 be from the obsolete Dutch verb dronten (cognate with drenten and drinten), to be 

 swollen (c/. Verwijs and Verdam, Middehuderlmidsch Woordenhoek, ii. col. 435), 

 and would indicate the Dodo's figure as represented by some draughtsmen, and as 

 described by Herbert. 



^ What became of the specimen (which may have been a relic of the bird 

 brought home by Van Neck's squadron) is not known. Broderip and the late 

 Dr. Gray suggested its identity with that now in the British iluseum, but on 

 what grounds is not apparent. 



