-: 



DODO. 



of UM Dodo in that island, I obtained only the following partly 

 negative statement : 



!.at there U a very general impression among" the inhabitant* 

 that UM Dodo did exist at Rodriguei, at well w in the Mauritius 

 iuclf ; but that the oldes* inhabitant* have never *een it, nor hai the 

 bird or any part of it been preferred in any muxeum or collection 

 formed in tboM islands, although some diatinguished amateun in 

 natural history hare panted their lives on them, and formed extensive 

 ^^tV- And with regard to the rappoied existence of the Dodo 

 in Madagascar, although Mr. Telftir had not received, at the time of 

 his writing to Europe, a reply to a letter on the subject which he 

 had addressed to a gentleman resident on that island, yet he stated 

 that he had not any great expectations from that quarter ; at the 

 Dodo was not mentioned in any of his voluminous manuscript* 

 Mtptdting that island, which contained the travels of persons who 

 had traversed M*^*g**~ r in all directions, many of them having no 

 other object in view than that of extending the bounds of natural 

 history.'*' 



\\'t close this part of the case with the evidence of one evidently 

 well qualified to judge, and whose veracity there is no reason to 

 doubt. If this evidence be, as we believe it to be, unimpeachable, it 



DODO. an 



the keeper was questioned therein yet I am confident that afterwards 

 shee oast them all agayne." 



Since the foregoing history was recorded in the 'Penny Cyclo- 

 pedia,' the late Mr. Hugh Edwin Strickland, whose early loss by a 

 melancholy accident the world of science has to deplore, has published 

 a work on the Dodo and its kindred, in which he has most dili. 

 retraced the ground previously gone over by Mr. Broderip. With 

 regard to the statement of L' Estrange, Mr. Strickland says : " I have 

 endeavoured to find some confirmation from contemporary autho- 

 rities of this very interesting statement, but hitherto without success. 

 The middle of the 17th century was most prolific in pamphlets, 

 newspapers, broadrides, 'rows of dumpy quartos,' and literary 

 ' rubbish mountains,' as Mr. Carlyle designates them ; but the poli- 

 tical storms of that period rendered men blind to the beauties and 

 deaf to the harmonies of nature, and its literature U very barren in 

 physical research." 



In addition to the works quoted in which reference is made to the 

 Dodo, Mr. Strickland gives the following : 



Cornelius Matelief, a Dutch admiral, arrived in the Mauritius in 

 1606, and in a journal published in Dutch, and translated into French, 

 gives an account of the I><1, which he calls Dod-acr >. <>r ! >r mten. 



LXxlo, from tin 1 picture In the i:iii;.-'.i Muncuin. 



If dear, n ! only that the Dodo existed, but that it was publicly 

 in London. The lacuna in the print represent the spaces 

 a hole burnt in the manuscript 



by a hoU t 



In Sloane Manuscript (No. 1839, 5, p. 108, Brit Mus.) is the follow- 

 ing interesting account by L' Estrange, in his observations on Sir 

 Thomas Browne's ' Vulgar Errors.' It is worthy of note that the 

 paragraph immediately follows one on the ' Kstridge ' (Ostrich) : 



" About 1638, as I walked London streete I saw the picture of 

 a strange fowl hong out upon a cloth vas and myselfe with one 



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

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

 Turkey Cock and so legged and footed but stouter and thicker and of 

 a more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of a yong Cock 

 Fesan (pheasant), and on the back of dunn or deare coulour. The 

 keeper called it a Dodo and in the ende of a chimney in the chamber 

 there lay an heap of Urge pebble (tones whereof bee gave it many in 

 oar sight, soau as bigg a nutmegs, and the keeper told us she* eats 

 them conducing to digestion, and though I remember not how farre 



In 1607 two ships, under the command of Van der Hnagen, stayed 

 some weeks in the Mauritius. A journal was published in Dutch of 

 this voyage, and translated in the ' Recueil des Voyages de^a Com- 

 pagnie des Indes Orientales,' Rouen, 1725. 



Admiral Peter Wilhelm Verhuffen touched at Mauritius in 1611, 

 and in 1613 an account of this voyage was published at Frankfurt, 

 entitled ' Kyllffter Schiffart ander Theil,' Ac., in which reference U 

 made to the Dodo, and especially to the fact that it attacked its 

 aggressors, and wounded them severely if they were not careful. 



In a journal by Peter van der Broecke, in which allusion is made 

 to a visit to the Mauritius in 1617, Mr. Strickland discovered the 

 sketch of a Dodo, but found no reference to it in the letter-press. 



In a work published by Francois Cauche at Paris in 1651, entitled 

 ' Relations veritable* etcurieusesde 1'Islede Madagascar,' he describes 

 birds called Oiseaux de Naiaret, which answer to the Dodo. He says 

 they lay but one egg the size of a halfpenny roll How he came to 



* Thli etirloni statement Is extracted In the modern edition of Sir Thomu 

 Brown' worki by Wilklm : published by Pickering. 



