128 PROFESSOR OWEN ch. iv. 



Br. (T Enfer, whose picture of " Christ Delivering 

 the Souls out of Purgatory " is in the same collec- 

 tion. There is the same light falling on the upper 

 branches — an effect which I saw in the beautiful 

 park of the Palace at the Hague — the same 

 exquisite little goldfinches, not a bit better than 

 in ours, perching on the branches in the picture 

 of Paradise, in which the Adam and Eve are by 

 Rubens. In another of Breughel's the foreground 

 is separated from the background by the same 

 oblique hard hedge, and the distance has the same 

 kind of city and canal in the same clear, cold, 

 grey-blue tint. I was delighted to have so many 

 confirmations of the value of our gem. I was 

 told, however, that good prices, as 100/. to 500/., 

 were only given for joint pictures, in which the 

 figures and composition were by another master ; 

 and that Breughel, when left to himself, as in most 

 of his pictures and ours, failed from his want of 

 taste in grouping and effect. There are only two, 

 not joint-pictures, of his in the gallery. . . . What 

 do you think I espied in a dark corner ? Why, a 

 DODO — a dodo in full plumage. Note that he 

 (the artist or the dodo, which you please) lived 

 between 1576 and 1639. He was contemporary 

 with the man whom Natural History describes as 

 having brought the stuffed dodo from Mauritius. 

 The nostrils are very far forwards, as in the 

 apteryx, and the feet very similar in the relative 

 position and size of the toes. I took a sketch ; 



