DODO, from the Portuguese Doudo (a simpleton[1]), a large bird formerly inhabiting the island of Mauritius, but now extinct the fiiilns ineptus of Linnaeus.
Brief mention of this remarkable creature has already been made (see Birds, vol. iii. p. 732), but some further particulars may be welcome. The precise year in which the Portuguese discovered the island we now know as Mauritius is undetermined; various dates from 1502 to 1545 having been assigned. Mascaregnas, their leader, seems to have called it Cerne, from a notion that it must be the island of that name mentioned by Pliny ; but most authors have insisted that it was known to the seamen of that nation as Ilka do Oisne perhaps but a corruption of Cerue, and brought about by their finding it stocked with large fowls, which, though not aquatic, they likened to Swans, the most familiar to them of bulky birds. How ever, the experience of the Portuguese is unfortunately lost to us, and nothing positive<can be asserted of the island or its inhabitants (none of whom, it should be observed, were human) until 1598, when the Dutch, under Van Neck, arrived there and renamed it Mauritius. A narrative of this voyage was published in 1601, if not earlier, and has been often reprinted. Here we have birds spoken of as big as Swans or bigger, with large heads, no wings, and a tail consisting of a few curly feathers. The Dutch called them Walghvogels (the word is variously spelled), i.e., nauseous birds, because, as is said, no cooking made them palatable ; but another and perhaps better reason, for it was admitted that their breast was tender, is also assigned, namely, that this island-paradise afforded an abundance of superior fare. 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. Among the company there was a draughtsman, and from a sketch of his Clusius, a few years after, gave a figure of the bird, which he vaguely called " Gallinaceus Callus pere- grinus," but described rather fully. Meanwhile two other Dutch fleets had visited Mauritius. One of them had rather an accomplished artist on board, and his drawings fortunately still exist.[2] Of the other a journal kept by one of the skippers was subsequently published. This in the main corroborates what has been before said of the birds, but adds the curious fact that they were now called by some Dodaarsen and by others Dronten.[3]
Henceforth Dutch narrators, though several times mentioning the bird, fail to supply any important fact in its history. Their navigators, however, were .not idle, and found work for their naturalists and painters. Clusius says that in 1605 he saw at Pauw s House in Leyden a Dodo s foot,[4] which he minutely describes. Of late years a copy of Clusius s work has been discovered in the high school of Utrecht, in which Is pasted an original drawing by Van de Venne superscribed " Vera effigies huius avig Walghvogel (quse & a nautis Dodaers propter foedam posterioris partis crassitiem nuncupatur), qualis viua Amsterodamum perlata est ex insula Mauri tii. Anno M.DC.XXVI." Now a good many paintings of the Dodo by a celebrated artist named Roelandt Savery, who was born at Courtray in 1576 and died in 1639, have long been known, and it has always been understood that these were drawn from the life. Proof, however, of the limning of a living Dodo in Holland at that period had hitherto been wanting. There can now be no longer any doubt of the fact ; and the paintings by this artist of the Dodo at Berlin and Vienna dated respectively 1626 and 1628 as well as the picture by Goiemare, belonging to the Duke of Northumberland, at Sion House, dated 1627, may be with greater plausibility than ever considered portraits of a captive bird. It is even probable that this was not the first example which had sat to a painter in Europe. In the private library of the late Emperor Francis of Austria is a series of pictures of various animals, supposed to be by the Dutch artist Hoefnagel, who was born about 1545. One of these represents a Dodo, and, if there be no mistake in Von Frauenfeld s ascription, it must almost certainly have been painted before 1626, while there is reason to think that the original may have been kept in the vivarium of the then Emperor Rudolf II., and that the portion of a Dodo s head, which was found in the Museum at Prague about 1850, belonged to this example. The other pictures by Roelandt Savery, of which may be mentioned that at the Hague, that in the possession of the Zoological Society of London (formerly Broderip s), that in the Schonborn collection at Pommersfelden near Bamberg, and that belonging to Dr Seyfiery at Stuttgart are undated, but were probably all painted about the same time (viz. 1626 to 1628). The large picture in the British Museum, once belonging to Sir Hans Sloane, by an unknown artist, but supposed to be by Roelandt Savery, is also undated ; while the still larger one at Oxford (considered to be by the younger Savery) bears a much later date, 1651. Undated also is a picture said to be by Pieter Holsteyn, and in the possession of Dr A. van der Willige at Haarlem in Holland.
of the bird one Emanuel Altham, who mentions it in two letters written on the same day from Mauritius to his brother at home. These have only of late, through the intervention of Dr Wilmot, been brought to light.[5] In one he says : " You shall receue a strange fowle : which I had at the Hand Mauritius called by ye portingalls a Do Do : which for the rareness thereof I hope wilbe welcome to you." The passage in the other letter is to the same effect, with the addition of the words " if it Hue." Nothing more is known of this valuable consignment. In the same fleet with Altham sailed Herbert, whose Travels ran through several editions and have been long quoted. It is plain that he could not have reached Mauritius till 1629, though 1627 has been usually assigned as the date of his visit. The fullest account he gives of the bird is in his edition of 1638, and in the curiously affected style of many writers of the period. It will be enough to quote the beginning : " The Dodo comes first to a description : here, and in Dygarrois[6] (and no where else, that ever I could see or heare of) is generated the Dodo (a Portuguize name it is, and has reference to her simpleness,) a Bird which for shape and rareness might be call d a Phcenir (wer t in Arabia :) " the rest of the passage is entertaining, but the whole has been often reprinted. Herbert, it may
be remarked, when he could see a possible Cymric similarity,
- ↑ Alewyn and Colle, in their Woordenschat der twee Taalen Portuyeesch en Nederduitsch (Amsterdam : 1714, p. 362), render it "Een sot, dwaas, dol, of, uitzinnig mensch."
- ↑ It is from one of these that the figures of the large extinct Parrot (Lophopsittacus mauritianus), before given (Birds, vol. iii. p. 732), wpre taken. Prof. Schlegel has announced his intention of imme diately publishing these sketches in fac-simile.
- ↑ The etymology of these names Las been much discussed. That of the latter, which has generally been adopted by German and French authorities, seems to defy investigation, but the former has been shown by Prof. Schlegel (Versl. en Mededeel. K. Akad. Wetensch.ii. pp. 255 el seqq.) to be the homely name of the Dabchick or Little Grebe (Podiceps minor), of which the Dutchmen were reminded by the round stern and tail diminished to a tuft that characterized the Dodo. The same learned authority suggests that Dodo is a corruption of Dodaars, but, as will presently be seen, we herein think him mistaken.
- ↑ What has become of the specimen (which may have been a relic of the bird brought home by Van Neck s squadron) is not known. Brodenp and the late Dr Gray have suggested its identity with that ^ow in the British Museum, but on what grounds is not apparent.
- ↑ 8 Proc. Zool. Soc. 1874, pp. 447-449.
- ↑ I.e., Rodriguez ; an error, as we shall see.
