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 &kteen days in 
Mauritius, or “‘Visle de Saincte Apollonie” as he called it, in 1638. 
According to 8@ 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 loison”), 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 Rarities, 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 Catalogue of many Natural 
Rarities, &e., 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 with 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 (¢f ALBATRos and Boosy), 
