THE TRADESCANT MUSEUM. 269 



" The clawe of the bird. Rock ; who, as Authors report, 

 is able to trusse an Elephant." 



Beside these marvels, the " Legge and claw of the 

 Cassawary or Emeu that dyed, at S. James's, West- 

 minster," is but commonplace, while among the " whole 

 birds enumerated " space forbids us to mention more' 

 than " The Bustard as big as a Turky, usually taken by 

 Greyhounds on Newmarket-heath " and " The Dodar, 

 from the Island of Maritius, it is not able to flie being so 

 big," Of this last-mentioned bird, the famous Dodo, 

 it may be interesting to give a short account. The speci- 

 men mentioned by Tradescant is thought by Strickland 

 {The Dodo and its Kindred. London, 1848. pp. 22, 23) 

 to be identical with that which Lestrange saw alive in 

 1638. O how it stirs the blood of the modern ornithologist 

 to think of the good old days when live Dodos were 

 exhibited in the London streets ! Lestrange 's account 

 (Sloane MSS., 1839, 5, p. 9) is as follows :— 



" About 1638, as I walked London streets, I saw the picture 

 of a strange fowle hong out upon a cloth, and myself e with one 

 or two more then in company went in to see it. It was kept 

 in a chamber, and was a great fowle somewhat bigger than the 

 largest Turky Cock, and so legged and footed ; . . . coloured 

 before like the breast of a young cock fesan, and on the 

 back of dunn or deare colour. The keeper called it 

 a Dodo. . . ." 



Be this as it may, the sad and. future history of 

 Tradescant's Dodo — which, by the way, the famous 

 Francis Willughby inspected, " We have seen this 

 Bird [i.e., the Dodo] dried, or its skin stuft in Tradescant 's 

 Cabinet " {The Ornithology, 1678, p. 154) — was as follows : 

 — When Tradescant's collection was bequeathed to Elias 

 Ashmole the Dodo with other specimens passed into the 

 Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Here it remained entire 

 till 1755, " when the Vice-Chancellor and the other 

 Trustees, to whose guardianship the worthy Ashmole 

 had confided his treasures, came in an unlucky hour to 

 make their annual visitation of the museum . . . when 

 this unhappy specimen, then at least a century old . . . 



