59^ THE DODO. 



The position held by the celelirated Dodo among birds was long doubtful, and was 

 only settled in comparatively late years by careful examination of the few relics which 

 are our sole and scanty records of this very remarkable bird. 



For many years the accounts given by the early voyagers of the Dodar, or Walgh 

 Vogel, found in the Mauritius and other islands, were thought to be merely fabulous 

 narratives, a mental reaction having set in from the too comprehensive credulity of the 

 previous times ; and the various portraits of the Dodo to be found in the books of travel 

 were set down as examples, not of the Dodo, but of the inventive faculties possessed 

 by the authors. Truth, however, stood its own ground, as it always will do, and steadily 

 withstood the batteries of negative reasonings that were brought to bear on the subject. 

 An entire bird was quietly lodged in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford ; portions of 

 other specimens made their way to Europe among the curiosities which sailors are so 

 fond of bringing home, and there is every reason to believe that a living example of this 

 bii'd was exhibited in Holland, if not in England. 



It is curious that, but for a code of far-seeing regulations, providing that when the 

 stuffed skin of a bird was so far decayed as to be useless as a specimen, the head and 

 feet should be preserved, our best and most perfect relics of the Dodo would have been 

 burned as useless rubbish. The specimen at Oxford was suffered to fall into decay, no 

 one seeming to be aware of its priceless value, and when the skin was destroyed, the 

 head and feet were laid aside and put away with other objects, among which they were 

 afterwards discovered to the great joy of the finder. These were sutiiciently perfect to 

 prove the real existence of the bird, and the correctness with which it had been depicted 

 by many draughtsmen ; some portraits being of the rudest description, while others were 

 the work of eminent artists, and most valuable for their high finish and accuracy of detail. 

 The position of the bird among the feathered tribes was long doubtfid, and it was 

 provisionally placed between the ostriches and bustards, until, after a careful examination 

 of the relics, it was found to belong to the pigeon tribe. This decision received a 

 valuable confirmation in the discovery of the tooth-ljilled pigeon, just described. 



For further information respecting the anatomical and scientific details of this bird, 

 the reader is referred to Strickland and Melville's instructive and interesting work on the 

 subject. 



Many of the earlier travellers have spoken of the Dodo — a name, by the way, 

 corrupted from the Dutch term Dod-aers — and their accounts are as quaint as the bird 

 which they describe. For example, Bontius writes as follows : " The Dronte, or 

 Dod-aers, is for bigness of mean size between an ostrich and a tin-key, from ^^■hich it 

 partly differs in shape and partly agrees with them, especially with the African ostriches, 

 if you consider the rump, cj^uills, and feathers ; so that it was like a pigmy among them 

 if you regard the shortness of its legs. 



It hath a great ill-favoured head, covered with a kind of membrane, resembling a 

 hood ; great black eyes ; a bending, prominent, fat neck ; an extraordinaiy long, strong, 

 bluish-white lull, only the ends of each mandible are a different colour, that of the upper 

 black, that of the nether yellowish, both sharp-pointed and crooked. Its gape, huge wide, 

 as being naturally very voracious. Its body is fat and round, covered with soft grey 

 feathers after the manner of an ostrich's ; in each side, instead of hard wing-feathers or 

 quills, it is furnished with small soft-feathered wings, of a yellowish ash colour ; and 

 behind, the rump, instead of a tail, is adorned with five small curled feathers of the same 

 colom-. It hath yellow legs, thick, but very .short ; four toes in each foot ; solid, long, as 

 it were scaly, armed with strong black claws. 



It is a slow-paced and stupid bird, and which easily becomes a prey to tlie fowlers. 

 The fiesh, especially of the brenst, is fat, esculent, and so copious that three or four Dodos 

 will sometimes suffice to fill one hundred seamen's jjellies. If they be old, or not well 

 boiled, they are of difficult concoction, and are salted and stored up for provision of 

 victual. There are found in their stomachs stones of an ash colour, of divers figures and 

 magnitudes, yet not bred there, as the common peo])le and seamen fancy, but .swallowed 

 by tlie bird; as tlmugh by this mark also nature wouU manifest that the.se fowls aiv of 

 the ostrich kind, in tJiat they swallow any hard things though they do not digest tlieni." 



