Introduction xxiii 
later (about 1601-2) other Dutch ships visited the same 
island, and these birds were called by some of the new¬ 
comers Dodaarsen , and by others Dronten} 
Drawings of these appeared in Europe soon afterwards, 
and the quaint birds became popularly known as ‘ Dodos,’ 
a term—apparently used by the Portuguese pilots who 
navigated the Dutch vessels—meaning simpletons. Lin¬ 
naeus, long afterwards, classified the bird of Mauritius, 
by his time extinct, under the name of Didus ineptus. 
In the neighbouring islands, Bourbon to the south¬ 
west and Rodriguez to the east, other allied birds were 
discovered ; but when the European adventurers intro¬ 
duced cats, rats, goats, and hogs, all the islands were soon 
overrun by the voracious invaders, against which the help¬ 
less indigenous species were wholly incapable of defence ; 
and thus it came to pass that within something like a 
hundred years of this unnatural invasion, the whole race of 
Didine birds throughout the islands had ceased to exist. 2 
No Englishmen seem to have appeared in this neigh¬ 
bourhood until the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
when, in 1613, Captain Castleton’s ship, the Pearl , visited 
1 Vide Art. ‘ Dodo ’ in A Dictionary of Birds , by Alfred Newton, 
p. 155 et seq .—‘De Bry gives two admirably quaint prints of the doings 
of the Hollanders, and in one of them the Walchvogel appears, being 
the earliest published representation of its unwieldy form, with a footnote 
stating that the voyagers brought an example alive to Holland.’—Cf. Hakluyt 
Soc. Edition of Francois Leguafs Voyage , vol. ii. PI. p. 71. 
Professor Newton discusses the etymology of these names, and quotes 
Professor Schlegel, who shows Dodaars to be the homely name of the 
Dabchick, Podicipes minor , whilst Dr. Jentink has suggested to Professor 
Newton that Dronte , the name naturalised in France, may be derived from 
the obsolete Dutch verb dronten , to be swollen. 
2 The causes which led to the extirpation of this ponderous pigeon are dis¬ 
cussed by Professor Newton in the article ‘ Extermination,’ (Vide Dictionary 
of Birds, p. 216), where he writes: ‘Clumsy, flightless, and defenceless, it 
soon succumbed, not so much to the human invaders of its realm as to the 
domestic beasts—especially hogs—which accompanied them, and there 
gaining their liberty, unchecked by much of the wholesome discipline of 
nature, ran riot, to the utter destruction of no inconsiderable portion of the 
Mauritian fauna.’ 
