Part 4

“The locality on which the Dodo is walking has the appearance of a strand which the tide has left dry.

“Wolfgangh’s account confirms the opinion which I hazarded in the article ‘Dodo’ in the ‘Penny Cyclopædia.’

“‘As to the stories of the disgusting quality of the flesh of the bird found and eaten by the Dutch, they will weigh but little in the scale when we take the expression to be, what it really was, indicative of a comparative preference for the turtle-doves there found, after feeding on Dodos usque ad nauseam. “Always partridges” has become proverbial, and we find from Lawson how a repetition of the most delicious food palls. “We cooked our supper,” says that traveller, “but having neither bread nor salt, our fat turkeys began to be loathsome to us; although we were never wanting of a good appetite, yet a continuance of one diet made us weary;” and again, “By the way our guide killed more turkeys, and two polecats, which he eat, esteeming them before fat turkeys.”’

“It does not follow that because the Dodo is represented as looking at the frutti di mari, he is about to devour them. But if it be granted he is, the admission would not militate against the opinion of those who would place the Dodo between the Struthious and Gallinaceous birds. It is well known that the turkeys in America come down to the shore and feed upon the ‘fiddler’ crabs; and there would be nothing extraordinary in a quisquilious feeder, such as the Dodo probably was, varying its fruit and vegetable diet occasionally by resorting to such animal substances as it might find on the strand. Common poultry eagerly pick up insects and slugs in the fields, and, in the neighbourhood of tidal rivers and estuaries, may be seen availing themselves of the smaller mollusca and crustacea left by the retreating tide.

“In my article ‘Struthionidæ’ under the section ‘Didus,’ is inserted the following extract from a letter written to me by Professor Owen:—

“‘Whilst at the Hague in the summer of 1848, I was much struck with the minuteness and accuracy with which the exotic species of animals had been painted by Savery and Breughel, in such subjects as Paradise, Orpheus charming the beasts, &c., in which scope was allowed for grouping together a great variety of animals. Understanding that the celebrated menagerie of Prince Maurice had afforded the living models to those artists, I sat down one day before Savery’s Orpheus and the beasts, to make a list of the species, which the picture evinced that the artist had had the opportunity to study alive. Judge of my surprise and pleasure in detecting in a dark corner of the picture (which is badly hung between two windows), the Dodo beautifully finished, showing for example, though but three inches long, the auricular circle of feathers, the scutation of the tarsi, and the loose structure of the caudal plumes. In the number and proportions of the toes and in general form, it accords with Edwards’s oil-painting in the British Museum; and I conclude that the miniature must have been copied from the study of a living bird, which, it is most probable, formed part of the Mauritian menagerie.’

“I little thought, when, with his permission, I published this graphic product of my kind friend’s pen, what was in store for me. Not long afterwards, a friend informed me that he had seen a picture at a dealer’s painted by one of the Saverys, and that he was pretty sure there was a Dodo in one corner of it. I sent for the picture, and there, sure enough, in the right-hand corner, and consequently to the left of the spectator, was the bird, in all the beauty of its ugliness. The Dodo stands on one foot with its back to the spectator, and turning round its head, which is represented with the huge bill picking the other uplifted foot. Like all the rest of the birds in this picture, which bears the name of Roland Savery, the Dodo is highly finished. The picture is now in my possession.”

The figure 2 in Plate I. is a faithful copy of the bird as represented in it.

Whilst on a visit to Sion House I was unexpectedly gratified by finding, in a small oil-painting in the long gallery, an unequivocal and original representation of the Dodo, in an attitude different from that of any of the figures of the living bird by Roland Savery, and evidently by another master. I lost no time in communicating this additional evidence of the extinct bird to Mr. Broderip, and in obtaining the permission of my noble host to make such use of the painting as might best subserve the interests of Natural History. Mr. Broderip communicated to the Zoological Society the following:—

“Notice of an Original Painting, including a Figure of the Dodo, in the Collection of His Grace the Duke of Northumberland, at Sion House.

“Professor Owen, at whose disposal the Duke of Northumberland placed the following additional pictorial evidence of the existence of the Dodo in the seventeenth century, has requested me to draw the attention of this Society to the highly interesting picture which the Duke has been so good as to send for the inspection of the Fellows. The size of the picture, which is in the finest preservation, is thirty-two inches by nineteen. It is executed in oil, and bears the following monogram and date. Mr. William Russell, with his usual discernment, detected in this monogram the signatures of Jean Goeimare and Jean David de Heem, and proved the correctness of his judgment by a reference to Brulliot. Jean Goeimare, who is not noticed by Descamps, Bryan, Sandrart, or Houbraken, is described by Brulliot as a Flemish artist who flourished at the commencement of the seventeenth century, and painted landscapes with many animals, executed with great care, but in rather a dry manner. Of De Heem, the celebrated painter of still life, it would be superfluous to say anything. We may conclude, then, that in this joint production the landscape and animals were painted by Goeimare, and the shells by De Heem.

Dodo (from the painting by Goeimare, 1627, in Sion House).]

“In this picture, which seems to have been intended as a record of rarities, the foreground represents a sea-shore from which the tide has retired, leaving empty shells of the following genera:—Nautilus, Pteroceras, Strombus, Triton, Pyrula, Cassis, Cypræa, Conus, Mitra, Turbo, Nerita, Mytilus, Ostrea, &c. Behind, on elevated ground, are two Ostriches; and below, to the right of the spectator, the Dodo is represented as in the act of picking up something from the strand” (fig. 5). “The head and body of the bird, covering an area as large as the palm of a man’s hand, are seen; but the legs are hidden. The painter of the Dodo, in my picture” (Pl. I. fig. 2), “has given the only complete foreshortened back view of the bird known to me. In the Duke’s picture the head and body are presented to the spectator on a larger scale; and I have nowhere seen the hood or ridge at the base of the bill, from which the bird obtained the name of Cygnus cucullatus, so clearly represented. Near the Dodo are a Smew and other aquatic birds, and further off Hoopoes and Terns. In the distance is the ocean, with a sea-monster awaiting the attack of Perseus, who descends on a winged steed to the rescue of Andromeda chained to a rock. Those who have had occasion to describe and figure new species of Testacea, know how difficult it is to find a draughtsman who can give a correct design of the shell to be represented. Unless the artist, like Mr. G. B. Sowerby, jun., is aware of the internal structure of the shell, and acquainted with its organization, a lamentable failure is generally the result. In the picture before us, with one exception—and even in that the specimen may have been distorted—so accurate was the eye of the painter, that if he had been aware of the organization of each shell—knowledge which he probably had not—he could not have represented the objects more correctly. The Nautili, Strombus gigas, Triton, and Pyrula are painted with great breadth and power, and all are drawn and coloured with wonderful truth; indeed a conchologist may name every species. One of the Nautili is partially uncoated, to show the nacre, and the other dissected, to display the concamerations. None of the shells have the epidermis, and all are of the natural size. The artificial condition of these subjects, and especially of the Nautili, is, it must be allowed, rather out of place in an assemblage of testaceans left on the sands by the retired tide, unless we are to suppose that the sea-nymphs had been amusing themselves by polishing the specimens and displaying the internal structure of one of them; but this very treatment shows that the designs were accurately made from real objects then considered as rarities. With the exception of the Dodo, none of the natural objects represented are now rare. The shells, especially those whose habitats 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 Canidæ. 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 Savery’s picture containing the Dodo, in the Berlin collection, bears 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 back 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 introduced 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 antecedent 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 satisfaction 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 born 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 portrait of this individual, and that the design thus made may have been copied by himself and by his nephew John in their later pictures. Or if we feel disposed to doubt the correctness of De Bry’s statement, we may yet suppose, with Professor Owen, that the menagerie of Prince Maurice supplied the living prototype for Savery’s pencil. This opinion is corroborated by the tradition recorded by Edwards, that the picture in the British Museum was drawn in Holland from the living bird. It is far more probable than the conjecture of Dr. Hamel (Bull. Ac. Petersb. vol. v. p. 317), that Savery’s pictures were copied from the Dodo exhibited in London, as this individual must in that case have lived in captivity at least twelve years, from 1626 to 1638.”

With the view to test the tradition recorded by Edwards as to the date and origin of the painting of the Dodo in the British Museum, I took a copy of the outline of the bird and laid upon it outlines of the bones of the Dodo subsequently to be described, as shown in Plate III., and thus obtained proof that the painting truly represented the natural size and shape of the Didus ineptus, and had no doubt been “drawn in Holland from the living bird.” From the date of the first landing of the Dutch on the Island of Mauritius, in 1598, to their colonization of it in 1644, their ships frequently, perhaps annually, visited that island, and, as recorded by most of the writers quoted by Broderip, and testified by Van der Hagen, in 1607, their crews feasted on Tortoises, Dodos, Doves, and other game, and also salted the Tortoises and Dodos for consumption during the voyage to the spice-islands of the Indian Archipelago. It is highly probable that more than one of the strange birds of Prince Maurice’s Island would be brought alive to Holland, and we know that a specimen was brought from that country for exhibition in London in the year 1638. It is certain that through the attacks of man, and those of the dogs, cats, and swine introduced by the Dutch into the Mauritius, the slow and heavy flightless Dodos were extirpated, probably before Leguat’s visit to the island in 1693. The French colonists, who succeeded the Dutch in 1712, seem not to have found any Dodos remaining in the island; their descendants and successors have preserved no traditions of the living bird; and Baron Grant, who resided in the Mauritius from 1740 to 1760, expressly states that no such bird was to be found there at that time.

Mr. Broderip refers, in his History of the Dodo, to the notice by Adam Olearius, in 1666, of the head of that bird in the museum of the Duke of Gottorp.

This specimen was most unexpectedly discovered by Professor Reinhardt in the Museum of Natural History at Copenhagen under the following circumstances:—“In the summer of 1840 I happened to search through a box wherein different natural-history objects were stored, which had been presented by the ‘Kunstkammer’ to the Royal Natural History Museum, and on this occasion I found a very large bird-cranium, which attracted my attention partly through its size, partly through its unusual and peculiar shape, and by a further examination and comparison with the authenticated representations of the Dodo, I became persuaded that it must have belonged to that remarkable bird.

“It is very well preserved, only wanting the left ‘os pterygoideum;’ and the ‘condylus occipitalis,’ together with the entire border of the ‘foramen magnum’ are broken away; otherwise it is quite perfect, so that an almost complete description of the osteology of the head of this remarkable genus may be made out from it. Although I have searched through Laurentz’s ‘Museum Regium’ and the MS. Catalogue of the ‘Kunstkammer,’ I have nowhere been able to discover any notice of such a cranium having ever been possessed by the Collection, and it is therefore clear that it has preserved the present specimen quite unwittingly, and it stands probably under one of the many numbers given as referring to heads of unknown foreign birds. I have meanwhile gradually come to the conclusion that this head is in all likelihood the one called ‘Dodo’s head’ by Olearius in the year 1666, in his description of the Gottorp Kunst-Museum, which, when that museum, at least in part, was amalgamated with the Copenhagen Museum, found its way there.” (Reinhardt, in ‘Kröyer’s Naturhist. Tidsskr.’ iv. pp. 71, 72 (1842)).

About ten years afterwards a portion of the bone of the upper beak of a Dodo was discovered in the Imperial and Royal Museum of Natural History at Prague.

Such, until the year 1865, was the sum of the remains of this large, flightless, extinct bird which were known to have reached Europe.

The happy perception, by the Danish Professor J. Reinhardt, in 1843, of the resemblance of the beak of the Dodo to that of the tropical Doves, generically separated by Cuvier under the name Vinago, on account of their proportionately larger, more strongly arched, and compressed beak than in other Pigeons, and the still closer resemblance, in miniature, of the beak of the Samoan Dove to that of the great Mauritian bird, which led Titian Peale to give to the former the generic name Didunculus, directed the ornithologist and ornithotomist to the family in which the most instructive comparisons might be made; and the results of these, so far as relates to the head and foot and the bones of those parts, published by the authors of the above-cited work (p. 4), left little doubt of the “striking affinity which exists between this extinct bird and the Pigeons”.

Whatever doubt, indeed, may have lingered in the minds of naturalists as to this affinity will probably be finally set at rest by the results of the comparison of the large proportion of the skeleton of the Didus ineptus which has at length been transmitted from the island of Mauritius to London, under the following circumstances.

In 1863, I was favoured by Miss A. Burdett Coutts with an introduction to the Bishop of Mauritius, then in this country, and I endeavoured to interest his lordship in aiding or promoting the acquisition, by the British Museum, of the zoological rarities of Madagascar, and especially of any remains of the Dodo which might be discovered in the island of Mauritius, to which his lordship was about to return.

How speedily and successfully the Bishop has fulfilled my latter desire will be shown by the following letter, with which I was favoured in November, 1865.

“St. James, Port Louis, “October 7, 1865.