Introduction 
XXVll 
with some admixture of yellow, and in general shape 
resembling the true Dodo of Mauritius. He exhibited 
some thirty years ago, to the Zoological Society, a curious 
old painting (which has been in the possession of Mr. 
Dare’s family for some generations) bearing the initials 
P. W.—The mark of Pierre Withoos, a water-colour artist 
who died at Amsterdam in 1693. It represents a flooded 
meadow, with aquatic birds, amidst which stands a white 
Dodo. Professor Newton thinks this drawing—evidently 
from life—may have been taken from the same bird 
which was figured in Zaagman’s edition of Bontekoe, 
probably a Dodo brought from the Island of Bourbon, 
and kept alive in Amsterdam. By the kindness of Mr. 
Dare, a reproduction of a lithograph copy of the bird as 
drawn by Withoos, which appeared coloured in the 
Transactions of the Zoological Society , is here given. 
Dubois, as Strickland says, not only confirms the 
accounts given by Tatton, Bontekoe, and Carre, of a 
brevipennate bird in Bourbon, but gives us a clear proof 
that a second species of the same group of birds inhabited 
that island. Speaking of the land-birds ( Vide post , p. 77) 
of the island, he enumerates : 1. Solitaires. ... 2. Oyseaux 
bleus. 
Strickland would have been disposed to refer this 
Oyseau bleu to the genus Porphyrio, ‘ were we not told 
that they were the size of the Solitaire , i.e. of a large 
goose, that the feet resembled those of a hen, and that 
they never fly. Moreover, Bory St. Vincent in his list 
of the birds of Bourbon ( Voyage aux quatre lies de la Mer 
d'Afrique , vol. i.) makes no mention of any species of 
Porphyrio .’ 
‘It is clear,’ he adds, ‘that a second brevipennate species, 
the Oyseau bleu of Sieur Dubois, was also a native of 
Bourbon, though from its speed in running it probably 
escaped the notice of the earlier voyagers.’ 
