22 HISTORICAL EVIDENCES [Parr I. 
Can the name ozseau de Nazaret have been a blunder, founded on oiseaw de nausée, the French 
translation of Walghvogel ? 
We will now put Cauche himself in the witness-box :— 
“ Yay veu dans l’isle Maurice des oiseaux plus gros qu’ un cygne,! sans plumes par le corps, qui 
est couvert dun duvet noir, il a le cul tout rond, le croupion orné de plumes crespues, autant en nombre 
que chaque oiseau a d’années, au lieu @aisles ils ont pareilles plumes que ces dernieres, noires et 
recourbées, ils sont sans langues, le bee gros, se courbant un peu par dessous, hauts de jambes, qui sont 
escaillées, n’ayans que trois ergots 4 chaque pied. Tl a un cry comme Poison, il n’est du tout si 
savoureux & manger, que les fouches et feiques [flamingos and ducks], desquelles nous venons de parler. 
Is ne font qu’un ceuf, blane, gros comme un pain d’un sol, contre lequel ils mettent une pierre blanche 
de la grosseur @’un ceuf de poules. Ts ponnent sur de Pherbe qu’ils amassent, et font leurs nids dans 
les forests, si on tue le petit, on trouve une pierre grise dans son gesier, nous les appellions oiseaux de 
Nazaret. La graisse est excellente pour adoucir les muscles et nerfs.”—Relation du Voyage de 
Francois Cauche, p. 130.? 
11. Our next evidence is of a very important kind, as it shews that in one instance at least 
this extraordinary bird was brought alive to Europe, and exhibited im this country. In a MS. 
(Sloane MSS., 1839, 5, p.9) in the British Museum, Sir Hamon Lestrange (the father of the 
more celebrated Sir Roger), in a commentary on Brown’s Vulgar Errors, and apropos of the 
Ostrich, narrates as follows :— 
« About 1638, as | walked London streets, I saw the picture of a strange fowle hong out upon a 
cloth, [hiatus in the MS.] and myselfe 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, but stouter and thicker and of a more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of 
a yong cock fesan, and on the back of dunn or deare coulour. The keeper called it a Dodo, and in 
the ende of a chymney in the chamber there lay a heape of large pebble stones, whereof hee gave it 
many in our sight, some as bigg as nutmegs, and the keeper told us shee eats them (conducing to 
digestion), and though I remember not how farr the keeper was questioned therein, yet I am confident 
that afterwards shee cast them all againe.”* 
I have endeavoured to find some confirmation from contemporary authorities of this very 
interesting statement, but hitherto without success. The middle of the 17th century was 
2 
most prolific in pamphlets; newspapers, broadsides, “rows of dumpy quartos,” and literary 
“ yubbish-mountains,’’ as Mr. Carlyle designates them ; but the political storms of that period 
rendered men blind to the beauties and deaf to the harmonies of Nature, and its literature is 
very barren in physical research. Still there may possibly linger among our records some 
| « Ta fioure de cet oiseau est dans la 2 navigation des Hollandois aux Indes Orientales en la 29 diée de Pan 1598. 
Ils Pappellent, de nausce.” 
2 « Peut-estre, que ce nom leur a esté donné, pour avoir esté trouvéz dans Visle de Nazare, qui est plus haut que 
celle de Maurice, sous le 17 degré au dela  Equateur du costé du Sud.” 
3 This passage was first published in Wilkin’s edition of Sir Thomas Brown’s Works, 4 vols. 8yo. Lond., 1836. 
v. l,p. 369; v. 2, p. 173. 
