Mr. H. E. Strickland on the Dodo and its Kindred. 137 



The story deuided into 5 or 6 parts, invented by Mr. Gos- 

 ling-, sometimes schollar to Mr. Camden, enginer, who be- 

 stowed THE DODAR (a BLACKE InDIAN BIRD) VPON Y^ 



Anatomy schoole. His wife dying left him some meanes 

 in a chest, w^^ a maide seruant cunningly getting y^ key of 

 her master, conveyed away, and soe he now glad to get his 

 liuinge by vseing his wits for such inventions.^^ 

 How Mr. Gosling obtained his '' Dodar," or what subsequently 

 became of it, we have not a particle of evidence. The contents, 

 and even the locality, of " y® Anatomy schoole " of 1634 are alike 

 unknown, the existing Anatomy school having been founded 

 about 1750, independently of any previous establishment. One 

 thing is certain, that this " Dodar " was not the same individual 

 as the one which subsequently formed one of the treasures of the 

 Ashmolean Museum, which was " ordered to be removed " in 

 1755, and whose head and foot are fortunately still in existence. 

 For we have the clearest evidence that the latter specimen was 

 in Tradescant's private collection at Lambeth in 1656, and was 

 not transferred to Oxford till 1683 (see * The Dodo and its Kin- 

 dred,' pp. 23, 32). Two Dodos have therefore existed, at suc- 

 cessive periods, in the venerable repositories of Oxford University, 

 where the naturalist from the remotest parts of Europe now 

 makes the mouldering relics of one an object of pilgrimage. 



I may here mention, that the presei-vation of these relics is 

 due not so much to Fortune as to old Ashmole himself. In his 

 original regulations for the management of his museum, it is 

 enacted that when any of the specimens were found to be in bad 

 condition, they should not be wholly destroyed, but the hard 

 parts, such as the heads and feet, should be put away in a closet ; 

 and to this judicious proviso of the old astrologer we are pro- 

 bably indebted for the most important evidences now existing on 

 the structure of the Dodo. 



2. Affinities of the Dodo. — I have received from that excellent 

 osteologist, Mr. Thomas Allis of York, the following interesting 

 communication, relating to a point in the anatomy of the Dodo 

 which Dr. Melville and I had overlooked, but which wholly con- 

 firms our conclusions. 



" On looking at plate ix* I immediately perceived strikingly 

 confirmatory evidence of your views as to the Columbidine affi- 

 nities of the Dodo, unnoticed either by thyself or by thy talented 

 coadjutor, in his elaborate anatomical description of the head of 

 that bird. This evidence consists in the number of the sclerotic 

 plates. At the Zoological Section of the British Association at 

 Liverpool I exhibited dissections of the sclerotic ring of about 

 seventy birds; among the seventy there were three species of 



