DODO 159 



Proceeding chronologically, we next come upon a curious bit of 

 evidence. This is contained in a MS. diary kept between 1626 

 and 1640 by Thomas Crossfield of Queen's College, Oxford, where, 

 under the year 1634, mention is casually made of one Mr. Gosling, 

 " who bestowed the Dodar (a blacke Indian bird) vpon ye Anatomy 

 school." Nothing more is known of it. About 1638, Sir Hamon 

 Lestrange tells us, as he walked London streets he saw the picture 

 of a strange fowl hung out on a cloth canvas, and going in to see it, 

 found a great bird kept in a chamber " somewhat bigger than the 

 largest Turkey cock, and so legged and footed, but shorter and 

 thicker." The keeper called it a Dodo and shewed the visitors 

 how his captive would swallow " large peble stones ... as bigge 

 as nutmegs." 



In 1651 Morisot published an account of a voyage made by 

 Francois Cauche, who professed to have passed sixteen days in 

 Mauritius, or "I'isle de Saincte Apollonie" as he called it, in 1638. 

 According to De Flacourt the narrative is not very trustworthy, 

 and indeed certain statements are obviously inaccurate. Cauche 

 says he saw there birds bigger than Swans, which he describes so 

 as to leave no doubt of his meaning Dodos ; but perhaps the most 

 important facts (if they be facts) that he relates are that they had 

 a cry like a Gosling ("il a un cry comme I'oison"), and that they 

 laid a single white egg, " gros comme un pain d'un sol," on a mass 

 of grass in the forests. He calls them " oiseaux de Nazaret," per- 

 haps, as a marginal note informs us, from an island of that name 

 which was then supposed to lie more to the northward, but is now 

 known to have no existence. 



In the catalogue of Tradescant's Collection of Barities, preserved at 

 South Lambeth, published in 1656, we have entered among the 

 " Whole Birds " a " Dodar from the island Mauritius ; it is not able 

 to flie being so big." This specimen may well have been the em- 

 balmed body of the bird seen by Lestrange some eighteen years before, 

 but any how we are able to trace the specimen through Willughby, 

 Lhwyd, and Hyde, till it passed in or before 1684 to the Ashmolean 

 collection at Oxford. In 1755 it was ordered to be destroyed, but, 

 in accordance with the original orders of Ashmole, its head and 

 right foot were preserved, and still ornament the Museum of that 

 University. In the second edition of a Catalogtie of many Natural 

 Barities, &c., to be*seen at the place formerly called the Music House, 

 near the West End of St. Paul's Church, collected by one Hubert 

 alias Forbes, and published in 1665, mention is made of a " legge 



their nation, or men acquainted witli their language, were employed to pilot the 

 Hollanders, we see at once how the first Dutch name Walghvogel would give 

 way. The meaning of Doudo not being plain to the Dutch, they would, as is 

 the habit of sailors, convert it into something they did understand. Then 

 Dodaers would easily suggest itself (c/. Albatros and Booby). 



