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THE PENNY MAGAZINE
or THE
Socfety for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
75.1
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY.
(Junz 1, 1833.
THE DODO.
(The Dovo. From a Painting in the British Museum.J
Tuʙ above wood-cut, which has been carefully copied
from n painting in the British Museum, representa a
bird, of the existence of whose species a little more than
two centuries ago there appears to be no doubt, but
which is now supposed to be entirely extinct. It must
be obvious that such a fact offers some of the moxst
interesting and important considerations; and the subject,
therefore. has claimed the particular attention of several
distinguished naturalists. The most complete view of
the evidence as to the recent existence of the Dodo is
given in a paper, by Mr. Duncan. of New College,
Oxford. which is printed in the twelfth number of the
Zoological Journal. To this valuable anicle we are
indebted for much of the follommng account.
The painting ia the British Museum was presented to
that institution by the late Mr. George Edwards; and
the history of it is thus given in his work on birds :—
“ The original picture from which this print of the
dodo is engraved, was drawn in Holland, from the living
bird, brought from St. Maurice’s Island. in the East
Indies, in the early times of the discovery of the Indies,
by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. It (the picture)
was the property of the late Sir Hans Sloane, to the time
of his deathi and afterwards becomiag my property. I
deposited it in the British Museum as a great curiosity.
Thg abojg history of the picture I had from Sir Hans
OL-
Bild 4.
Sloane, and the late Dr. Mortimer, Secretary of tka
Royal Society.
The evidence of the former existence of this bird does
not., however, entirely rest upon this picture and its
traditionary historyi for if it were so, it would be easier to
imagine that the artist had invented the representation
of some unknown creature, than that the speoies shoukd
have so utterly become lost within so comperatively short
a time. There are three other representations of the
dodo which may be called original; for they are given
in very early printed books, and are evidently not opied
one from the other, although they each agree in
reprosenting the sort of hood on the head, the eye placed in a
bare skin extending to the beak, the curved and swelling
neck, the short heavy body, the small wingu, the stumpy
legs and diverted claws, and the tuft of ramp feathern.
The first of these pictures is given in a Latin work
by Clusius. entitled Caroli Clusii Exoticorum, lib. v.
printed in 1605. He says that his figure is taken from
a rough sketch in a journal of a Dutch voyager. who
had seen the bird in a voyage to the Moluccas, in 1598;
and that he himself had seèn, at Leyden, a leg of the
dodo, brought from the Mauritius.
The second representation is in Herbert’a Travels,
published in 1634. We subjoin his description of the
bird, which is very quaint and curious :—
2E
The Penny Magazine 1833.
9
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