2262 Birds. 



a little resembling the Africk ostriches ; but so much as for their more certain dif- 

 ference I dare to give thee (with two others) her representation." — p. 19. 



This appears to be the evidence of an eye-witness ; but what will our readers say 

 to the evidence of another eye-witness, Sir Hamon Lestrange, who saw a dodo exhi- 

 bited in the streets of London. The original MSS. from which the following passage 

 is extracted may be seen in the British Museum (Sloane MSS. 1839, 5, p. 9). 



" About 1638, as I walked London streets, I saw the picture of a strange fowle 

 hong out upon a cloth, [hiatus in 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 some- 

 what 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 young cock 

 fesan, and on the back of dun or deare coulour. The keeper called it a dodo, and in 

 the ende of a chimney in the chamber there lay a heape of large pebble stones, where- 

 of 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 fair the 

 keeper was questioned therein, yet I am confident that afterwards shee cast them all 

 againe." — p. 22. 



This is indeed a choice morsel, and one that immediately follows is also of great 

 interest : it is copied from Tradescant's Catalogue of his ' Collection of Rarities pre- 

 served at South Lambeth near London,' and is dated 1656. Here is the entry : 

 " Dodar from the island Mauritius ; it is not able to flie being so big." Willughby, 

 in his ' Ornithologia,' states that he saw this specimen in Tradescant's Museum : two 

 other writers also speak of it, Llhwyd in 1684 and Hyde in 1700. It passed, with 

 the rest of the collection, to Oxford, and there formed part of the Ashmolean Museum, 

 until ordered to be destroyed by the authorities, on the 8th of January, 1755. Mr. 

 Strickland suggests, with great show of reason, that this specimen was the one seen 

 alive by Sir Hamon Lestrange. Notwithstanding the fiat of the big-wigs of Oxford 

 for the destruction of the only dodo then in the world, some underling seems to have 

 secreted its head and foot ; and these have afforded Dr. Melville the materials for the 

 elaborate essay which forms the second part of the volume before me. 



I must now take a glance at the solitaire, a bird formerly inhabiting the island of 

 Rodriguez, and one which Mr. Strickland describes as an homologous representative 

 of the dodo. It is introduced to us in the following quaint translation from Francois 

 Leguat's ' Voyages et Avantures,' published in London in 1708. 



" Of all the birds in the island the most remarkable is that which goes by the name 

 of the solitary, because it is very seldom seen in company, tho' there are abundance 

 of them. The feathears of the males are of a brown grey colour : the feet and beak 

 are like a turkey's, but a little more crooked. They have scarce any tail, but their 

 hind-part covered with feathers is roundish, like the crupper of a horse ; they are taller 

 than turkeys. Their neck is straight, and a little longer in proportion than a turkey's 

 when it lifts up his head. Its eye is black and lively, and its head without comb or 

 cop. They never fly, their wings are too little to support the weight of their bodies ; 

 they serve only to beat themselves, and flutter when they call one another. They will 

 whirl about for twenty or thirty times together on the same side, during the space of 

 four or five minutes. The motion of their wings makes then a noise very like that of 

 a rattle ; and one may hoar it two hundred paces off. The bone of their wing grows 

 greater towards the extremity, and forms a little round mass under the feathers, as big 



