16 
are the seas of the Antilles, are at present very common ; but at the date of the picture 
— the second year of the reign of our first Charles — the natural productions of the West 
Indies were not well known, and were, comparatively, very scarce. With the shells on 
the shore is the cranium of a carnivorous quadruped, apparently of the family Caniclce. 
The monster-cetacean in the distance has evidently no chance with the avenger who is 
coming down upon him mounted on a winged steed. But Pegasus, who, with other 
prodigies, sprang from the blood that dropped from Medusa’s head, as the conqueror 
who had cut it off with his harpe traversed the air with his gory trophy, immediately 
winged its flight to Helicon, there to become the pet of the Muses. The best version 
of this mythological story relates, that when Perseus afterwards killed the sea-monster 
and delivered Andromeda on the coast of Ethiopia, he effected his purpose by raising 
himself in the air through the aid of the wings and talaria given to him by Mercury, 
and not with the help of the winged horse on which most of the painters mount him. 
“ Professor Owen informs me that Roland Savory’s picture containing the Dodo, in 
the Berlin collection, hears the date of 1626 ; and that the colour of the Dodo in the 
Duke of Northumberland’s picture resembles that of the portrait of the bird, of life 
size, by the same painter, now at Oxford. L’Estrange describes the hue of the hack 
of the living Dodo which he saw exhibited in London ‘ about 1638,’ as of ‘ dunn or 
deare colour.’ ” 
The picture of the Dodo at Berlin by R. Savery, to which Mr. Broderip refers, is 
copied in figure 1, Plate I. Another figure of the bird, by the same artist, is intro- 
duced into a painting in the Imperial Collection of the Belvedere at Vienna. Fig. 3, 
Plate I. of the present work, is from the copy of this picture, transmitted by Dr. Tschudi 
to Mr. Strickland, and given at p. 30 of the ‘ Dodo and its Kindred.’ The date of the 
picture is 1628. 
We have thus evidence of figures of the bird being introduced into paintings executed 
during the years 1626, 1627, and 1628. The different attitudes and life-like actions of 
the Dodo, in these representations, indicate that the artists had a living model before 
them. Their original studies may, indeed, have been executed at some period ante- 
cedent to the dates of the paintings into the subjects of which this rare and curious 
bird is introduced ; but the capital fact remains, viz. that the figures given in Plate I. 
faithfully represent the shape, colour, and attitudes of the now extinct brevipennate 
bird of the Mauritius. Different conjectures have been propounded as to the time, 
place, and other circumstances under which Roelandt Savery and Jean Goeimare were 
enabled to execute their drawings or studies of the living Dodo, and I had the satis- 
faction to find that Mr. Strickland concurred in the conclusion at which I arrived after 
my researches in Holland into the history and evidences of the bird. 
“ As Roland Savery was horn in 1576, he was twenty-three 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 
