30 PICTORIAL EVIDENCES [Parr I. 
list of the species which the picture sufficiently evinced that the artist had had the opportunity to study 
alive. Judge of my surprise and pleasure in detecting in a dark corner of the picture (which is badly 
hung between two windows) the Dodo, beautifully finished, showing for example, though but three 
inches long, the auricular circle of feathers, the scutation of the tarsi, and the loose structure of the 
caudal plumes. In the number and proportions of the toes, and in general form, it accords with 
Edwards’s oil painting in the British Museum ; and I conclude that the miniature must have been copied 
from the study of a living bird, which, it is most probable, formed part of the Mauritian menagerie. 
The bird is standing in profile with a lizard at its feet. Not any of the Dutch naturalists to whom I 
applied for information respecting the picture, the artist, and his subject, seemed to be aware of the 
existence of this evidence of the Dodo in the Hague collection.” —Penny Cyclopedia, vol. xxi. p. 143. 
3. Shortly after visiting the Hague in 1845, I made a search in the Royal Gallery at 
Berlin, which contains several of Roland Savery’s highly finished paintings. Among them I 
found one which represents numerous animals in Paradise, one of which is a Dodo, of about 
the same size and in nearly the same attitude as the figure last mentioned. But what renders 
this picture peculiarly interesting is, that it affords us a date, the words “ Roelandt Savery 
fe. 1626,” being painted in one corner. (See Frontispiece.) As Roland Savery was born in 
1576, he was 23 years old when Van Neck’s expedition returned to Holland ; and as we are 
told by De Bry that the Dutch brought home a Dodo on that occasion, it is possible enough 
that Savery may have taken the portrait of this individual, and that the design thus made may 
have been copied by himself and by his nephew John in their later pictures. Or if we feel 
disposed (for the reasons given at p. 11, supra) to doubt the correctness of De Bry’s state- 
ment, we may yet suppose, with Professor Owen, that the menagerie of Price Maurice supplied 
the living prototype for Savery’s pencil. This opinion is corroborated by the tradition recorded 
by Edwards, that the picture in the British Museum was drawn in Holland from the living 
bird. It is far more probable than the conjecture of Dr. Hamel, (Bull. Ac. Petersb. vol. v. 
p. 317) that Savery’s pictures were copied from the Dodo exhibited in London, as this indivi- 
dual must in that case have lived in captivity at least 12 years, from 1626 to 1638. 
4. The present sheet was just rescued from the printer in time to announce an important 
addition to our Pictorial Evidence. Dr. J.J.de Tschudi, the eminent Peruvian traveller, 
hearing that this work was in preparation, has had the kindness to transmit to me an exact 
copy of a figure of the Dodo by Roland Savery, which forms part of a picture in the imperial 
collection of the Bellvedere at Vienna, and which is here introduced. (Plate III.) Dr. Tschudi 
states that this picture is dated 1628; two years later than the Berlin one. There are two 
circumstances which give an especial interest to this painting. First, the novelty of attitude 
in the Dodo, exhibiting an activity of character which corroborates the supposition that the 
artist had a livmg model before him, and contrasting strongly with the aspect of passive 
stolidity m the other pictures. And, secondly, the Dodo is represented as watching, appa- 
rently with hungry looks, the merry wrigglings of an eel in the water! Are we hence.to 
infer that the Dodo fed upon eels? The advocates of the Raptorial affinities of the Dodo, 
