2260 Birds. 



I have alluded as tending to the demolition of all fictitious histories, would perhaps 

 very shortly have driven the dodo completely into the realm of fiction, had not the 

 learned professor C. Bernhardt discovered a second skull amongst a heap of rubbish 

 at Gottorf, and on carefully examining its structure pronounced it to be that of 

 a pigeon and not that of a vulture.* To this suggestion of Beinhardt I called the at- 

 tention of naturalists last year, when a like theory was started by Mr. Strickland at 

 the meeting of the British Association. 



It is now clear that there exist two skulls and two feet which belong to no species 

 of bird now known to naturalists, and although the positive evidence connecting the 

 head and feet is not complete, yet there is no good reason for disputing that the heads 

 and feet belonged to the same species of bird. Such is the absolute evidence of the 

 existence of the dodo ; and Mr. Broderip, in an admirable paper published in the 

 Penny Cyclopaedia,* has collected a mass of corroborative evidence from the ac- 

 counts of voyages, from paintings, and from engravings, and thus we have a very tole- 

 rably authentic history of the bird to supply the place of that fictitious history which 

 we are compelled to abandon. 



Such, then, is the state of our knowledge of this interesting member of the animal 

 kingdom, and the whole has been re-arranged, the quotations given at full length, the 

 engravings and paintings accurately copied, the remains carefully examined, minutely 

 described and beautifully figured, and the pigeon theory adopted, defended, and, some 

 think, satisfactorily established, in the admirable work whose title I have given over- 

 leaf. There can no longer be a rational doubt that these birds, together with the 

 solitaire and one or two other cognate species, formerly inhabited the islands of 

 Mauritius, Bodriguez and Bourbon, and owe their utter extinction to the hand 

 of man. It is supposed that these islands were discovered during the first half 

 of the sixteenth century, but we have no precise date. The passages cited from the 

 old voyagers are most interesting, and I cannot help regretting that so large a portion 

 of them are in the Latin, antiquated French or Dutch languages, and only translated in 

 an Appendix to which no reference is made ; in fact, the insertion of the translation 

 is confessedly an after-thought. The following is from a very rare Dutch tract in the 

 British Museum. It is the journal of Willem van West-Zanen, one of the captains 

 who sailed in the fleet of Heemskerk and Harmansz, in the years 1601-3: it was 

 printed in 1648, under the editorial care of H. Soeteboom. 



" The birds, of which the island % is full, are of all kinds : doves, parrots, Indian 

 crows, sparrows, hawks, thrushes, owls, swallows, and many small birds ; white and 

 black herons, geese, ducks, dodos, tortoises, seacows. 



" The sailors were out every day to hunt for birds and other game, such as they 

 could find on the land, while they became less active with their nets, hooks, and other 

 fishing-tackle. No quadrupeds occur there except cats, though our countrymen have 

 subsequently introduced goats and swine. The herons were less tame than the other 

 birds, and were difficult to procure, owing to their flying amongst the thick branches 

 of the trees. They also caught birds which some name dod-aarsen, others dronten ; 

 when Jacob van Neck was here, these birds were called ivallich-vogels, because even a 

 long boiling would scarcely make them tender, but they remained tough and hard, 



* Kroyer's Tidskrift, iv. 71. Lehman in Nov. Act. Ac. Leop. Car. xxi. 491. 

 f Penny Cyclopedia, ix. 47. \ Mauritius. 



