78 Lord Rothschild on the [Ibis, 



III. — On one of the four original pictures from life of the 

 Reunion or White Dodo. By Lord Rothschild, F.R.S., 

 M.B.O.U. 



(Plate 11.) 



The first mention of the White or Reunion Dodo (Didus 

 borbunicus) was made by Tatton, the chief officer of Captain 

 Castleton (Voy. Castleton, Purchas his Pilgrimes (ed. 1625) i. 

 p. 331, Bourbon or Reunion) and his account is as follows : — 



" There is a store of land fowle both small and great 

 plenty of Doves, great Parrats, and such like ; and a great 

 fowle of the bignesse of a Turkic, very fat and so short- 

 winged, that they cannot fly, being white and in a manner 

 tame : and so be all other fowles, as having not been 

 troubled nor feared with shot. Our men did beat them 

 down with sticks and stones. Ten men can take fowle 

 enough to serve fortie men a day.'^ 



After this the White Dodo was mentioned by Boutekoe 

 in five different treatises from 1646 to 1650, and by Carre 

 in 1699, and a more detailed description is given by 

 Sieur D. B. (Dubois) in 1674. In this description, how- 

 ever, the extremities of the tail and wings are given as 

 black, whereas in the picture of Pieter Witthoos they appear 

 as yellow. The truth is that the males and females were 

 very different. The full history of the two Dodos has lately 

 been fully worked out by Professor Oudemans, and I give 

 here his description of the two sexes of the White Dodo : — 



Male. The horny sheath of the upper mandible was hooked 

 and sharp ; its distal end black, its proximal half was yellow 

 with transverse black stripes; the rest of the bill was white. 

 The head and neck were reddish brown abruptly passing 

 into a cream-coloured breast and gradually becoming yel- 

 lowish further back ; a few downy feathers were scattered 

 over the head, and a ball- shaped tail of Ostrich-like feathers 

 gradually passed into the subcaudal coverts and circumanal 

 feathers. 



