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14,797

2000 NOV TO 1942 LIBRARY

Museum of FARE

WYMAN AND SONS,

ORIENTAL, CLASSICAL, AND GENERAL PRINTERS,
GREAT QUEEN STREET, LONDON, W.C.

WINTER WORK.

"Look on Nature as a volume
Ever open to inspection,

In which characters are written
By the Hand of the Almighty:
Reverently turn its pages."

[graphic]

HE reign of Winter is now fairly begun; and the naturalist, who has occupied the preceding months in the study of the wonders presented to in the

his eye world around him, begins to find a diminution in their number. Not that nothing is left to engage his attention. Myriads of Fungi, of bright and varied hues, spring up in the wood and on the hedgebank; a few hardy Wild Flowers brave the inclement season; and underground, many an Insect is awaiting the return of genial weather to assume its perfect state. To such naturalists as are also collectors, the want of active employment in searching after additions to their store is often a most welcome "rest from their labours." The Botanist delights in a long winter evening, when he can bring out his treasured specimens from their various hiding-places in music-books or old newspapers, to transfer them neatly to their destined foolscap; and the Entomologist has always his insects to arrange or re-arrange, to select specimens for "exchange," or fight his battles over againin describing to a correspondent how he captured Edusa flying over a clover-field, or how his supposed Cabbage Butterfly proved to be a Bath White! No. 25.

No: the Winter is no dead time for the collectorrather is it a time for additional exertion in-doors, compensating for the comparative inactivity with

out.

But, besides these, there are many who have not time or inclination to do more than cursorily inspect the works of Nature-who have noticed many of their beauties during the summer months, and, having neither insects to arrange nor plants to mount, still do not wish to lose altogether the memory of the enjoyment of their country walks. They know too little to enable them to appreciate scientific works, and Natural History books which are at once cheap and good are "few and far between ;" and yet they would like to keep up and add to the little information they have already gained, so that another season may find them more prepared to observe and admire. The question, then, is: Can we provide a means by which information may be pleasantly gained at a time unfavourable for the examination of natural objects in their most perfect state? In answer, it may be said that, to a certain extent, this is possible; and the following suggestions for so doing are offered in the hope that they may prove useful to at least a few of our readers.

In many of our larger towns, and in not a few villages, there exists a Natural History Society, the members of which meet during the summer months for rambles in different parts of their district, with a view to increasing their knowledge of the natural objects which it contains. It is gratifying to learn that such societies are greatly on the increase; but it is to be regretted that many of them confine their investigations to the summer months, remaining (like many of the objects of their study) dormant during the winter. Where such a society is fairly

B

more than I can tell, but this I know, she dislikes to hear them, and I feel sure it is often an open question with mamma-terrier whether to abandon or bite the noisy chits is the better plan of proceeding.

Why the cubs of the Bear family (for the same fact holds good in its application to the entire race as it does to the Polar Bear) should be so remarkably diminutive in proportion to the parent is a matter worthy of serious consideration. I cannot help thinking the remarkably small size of the cubs accounts for the fact, and fact I know from long experience it is, viz., that hunters very rarely kill a female bear in cub. Now it occurs to me, having seen these infant Polars, that female bears may be frequently killed in this interesting condition, and the embryo be so small as to escape a hunter's observation; and at or near to the time of birth the female bear hides, and does not reappear until from two to three months after the cubs are born, during which time she neither eats nor drinks, but suckles her cubs whilst in a quasistate of hybernation. She lives during that period upon the material supplied her by the absorption of her own fat and tissues.

The habits of the Polar Bear, apart from its aquatic and carnivorous propensities, differ entirely from those of the North American, Brown, and Black Bears. The latter hybernate during the colder months of winter; the former, although subject to perpetual Arctic cold, never does. The female Polar Bear when in cub retires about the month of November, and hides in a cave, or in some secure retreat deep beneath the snow; in December, so say the Esquimaux, she brings forth two cubs. This, as far as dates are concerned, tallies nearly with the birth I have just recorded in the Zoological Gardens. Thus concealed, and without tasting food of any description, the Mamma Bear carries on her maternal duties until the month of April in the year following; she then quits her nursery, thin, savage, and terribly exhausted, but running at her heels are two cubs, by this time as large as good-sized dogs. These, her children, she teaches to feed on seal and fish, to swim, to hunt, and to become fitted for and presentable to the best society in bear-land. This duty accomplished, the mother drives them off to live by their own claws and teeth as best they can.

Papa Polar Bear, during the retirement of his wife, leads that disreputable, roaming, ne'er-do-well sort of life the lord of creation is always accused of indulging in-whether deservedly or not, let him so stigmatised answer-when cast loose upon the world, freed from the protecting guidance of the fair. He keeps no regular hours, sleeps anywhere, dines when it suits his humour, flirts with unmarried lady Polars, indulges in a fight now and again, just, as the Hibernian says, to keep his hand

in, and altogether does the unbridled bachelormind, I do not say husband; I tremble to think what might befall me were I to commit myself to so rash a statement.

Now if these tiny bears came into the world larger and more fully developed, would it not probably happen that, with erratic and disobedient habits, always inherent in young animals, they would incautiously quit their nursery too soon, and get starved to death by cold and hunger? More than this, the most pressing desire for food would hardly tempt the female bear to quit them whilst in a helpless condition; but if she found her cubs could follow her before the snow was gone or food obtainable, might she not be tempted to sally forth from her snug den too soon, and by so doing imperil the safety of her offspring? But being so small at birth, and withal so utterly helpless, it becomes absolutely necessary that many months should pass away before the possibility arrives of their being able to follow the mother.

Twice only in my long experience as hunter and trapper has it fallen to my lot to see a bear killed in cub. So rarely does it happen even to Indians who are always bear-hunting to destroy a female in cub, that they hold doing it in superstitious dread, and firmly believe and maintain that he who so destroys a pregnant female bear will die before the end of a year. Once during the marking the Boundary line in North West America it occurred that a bear was killed in cub; and in this case the hunter who shot Madam Bear was an Indian, in the employ of the Commission. Of course his comrades thought him doomed; as it was not very clear in what manner harm could befall him, the matter passed away, and I had almost forgotten it, when, strange to say, the very Indian who killed the bear was shot dead in a fray with some gold-washers - a coincidence that the more firmly established in the red-skins' mind the truth of their belief.

but

The time a she-bear carries her young is about seven months, and I have never seen a bear with more than two cubs. I am indebted to Mr. Bartlett, the able superintendent of the Zoological Gardens, for the knowledge of the singular arrangement observable in the mammæ or teats of the female bear. There are six in all; but four of them are placed at the posterior part of the abdomen, and two on the anterior, the latter two being separated from the posterior four by a wide interval,'to all appearance unprovided with any lacteal glands. There is some reason for this, but what that may be, a more intimate acquaintance with the habits of the beast can only determine.

Fear of occupying space that can be more profitably employed forbids my writing a tithe of what I should like to write concerning this, to me most interesting subject. I have, however, been tempted to offer these somewhat crude speculations

in the pages of SCIENCE GOSSIP in the hope of inducing some other naturalists or hunters to give us their theories, or experiences-which is much better-about bears and their cubs.

I left the baby Polars with a hearty wish, that during their babyhood "good digestion might wait on appetite, and health on both."*

IT

JOHN KEAST LORD, F.Z.S.

THE WHITE DODO.

T is an interesting though melancholy matter of observation to the natural historian and the philosopher, to witness the gradual diminution and ultimate extinction of various living races from the surface of the globe. Man himself, the lord of the creation, is not exempt from this destiny; but in some one or other of the numerous branches of the human family is obliged to yield to the mighty and various (though, perhaps, little regarded) causes which are producing such striking results. The tribes of Red Indians which inhabited Newfoundland have entirely disappeared within the last fifty years, and are now only known in the records of the past; while their co-genitors of the adjacent continent are as gradually, though as surely, diminishing before the progress of the backwoodsman of the "far west." In Australia, also, the same results are visible; for her aboriginal inhabitants are yearly decreasing, while in Tasmania not one remains.

But it is not our present purpose to enter on the discussion of the changes which have affected the human family. In the lower orders of animals these changes are equally marked, and their results, perhaps, are the more striking because they are entirely effected by external and unnoticed agencies; and it is seldom, until a species has become nearly extinct, that our attention is called to the matter. Nor need we go far to seek for these changes, for in England itself they are rapidly going on. Macaulay, speaking of the state of the country in the seventeenth century, says, "The red deer were then as common in Gloucestershire and Hampshire as they now are among the Grampian Hills. On one occasion, Queen Anne on her way to Portsmouth saw a herd of no less than five hundred. The wild bull, with his white mane, was still to be found wandering in a few of the southern forests. The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick. The wild cats were frequently heard by night wailing round the lodges of the rangers of Whittlebury and Needwood. The yellow-breasted marten was still pursued in Cranbourne Chase for his fur, reputed inferior only to that of the sable. Sea eagles, measuring more than nine feet between the extre

My wish was not realized.' Since the above went to press the baby bears have died.

mities of the wings, preyed on' fish along the coast of Norfolk. On all the downs from the British Channel to Yorkshire, bustards strayed in troops of fifty or sixty, and were often hunted with greyhounds. The marshes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire were covered during some months of every year by immense crowds of cranes. Some of these races the progress of cultivation has extirpated. Of others, the numbers are so much diminished that men crowd to gaze at a specimen as at a Bengal tiger or a polar bear."* The most remarkable illustration of the changes which have been mentioned is that singular bird the Dodo (Didus ineptus), which in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was numerous in the islands of Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon, but is now totally extinct.

Indeed until very recently, a few disjointed and decaying relics in the British Museum, and in the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford, a painting in oil in the former, and a few rude pictorial representations in the journals of the early Dutch voyagers, were nearly all that remained to attest their past existence. The disappearance of this species is the more remarkable from its having been comparatively recent, for from one of the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum, there is every reason to believe that, in 1639, a living dodo was exhibited in England. Yet until the discovery of the head and foot in a lumber-room in the Museum at Oxford, so mysterious and sudden had been its extinction from the islands where it was alleged to have been found, that it was almost considered to have been a fabulous creature. The admirable memoir by Dr. Melville, and the late Mr. Strickland, has, however, thrown much light on (the subject, proving not only their existence, but that they belonged, notwithstanding their large size and unwieldly flightless character, to the family of the Columbidæ, or Pigeons, and somewhat allied to the genus Treron. The MS. note to which we have alluded, is by Sir H.'Lestrange, and is as follows:-" About 1639, as I walked London streets, I saw the picture of a strange fowle hong out upon a cloth, and myself, with one or two more in company, went in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and was a great fowle, somewhat bigger than the largest turkey cock, and so legged and footed, but stouter and thicker, and of a more erected shape, coloured before like the breast of a young cock fesan, and on the back of dunn or deare colour. The keeper' called it a Dodo." It seems most probable that this very bird was bought by Tradescant, and on its death was placed in his museum, for when the latter was presented to the University of Oxford, by Ashmole, it contained a perfect stuffed Dodo. There it remained, having become decayed from neglect, until January 8, 1755, on which day it was ordered by the

"History of England." Vol. 1, p. 312.

Vice-Chancellor and his co-trustees to be burnt! So disappeared the last of the Dodos, the head and foot, now in the Ashmolean Museum, being by accident saved from destruction.

Unwieldly as this bird was, yet it seemed perfectly fitted for the position in which it existed. The island of Mauritius, when the Dutch took possession of it in 1598, was covered with dense forests of palms and other fruit trees. Professor Reinhardt well remarks, “A bird adapted to feed on the fruits produced by these forests, would, in that equable climate, have no occasion to migrate to distant lands; it would revel in the perpetual luxuriance of tropical vegetation, and would have but little need of locomotion. Why, then, should it have the means of flying? Such a bird might wander from tree to tree, tearing with its powerful beak the fruits which strewed the ground, and digesting their stony kernels with its powerful gizzard, enjoying tranquillity and abundance, until the arrival of man destroyed the balance of animal life, and put a term to its existence. Such, in my opinion, was the Dodo, a colossal, brevipennate, frugivorous pigeon."

Its flesh does not appear to have been very palatable, for the Dutch sailors called the bird Walckvögels, or disgusting birds, from their toughness.

Much interest has been excited by the discovery of numerous bones of the Dodo, by Mr. Clark, in a marsh, on the estate of M. de Bissy, in Mauritius. This was made so recently as October, 1865, and strongly proves the truth of the narratives of the Dutch navigators as to the numbers of the birds which they found. The Mauritius Commercial Gazette gives an interesting account of Mr. Clark's discovery, stating that all the bones have been found except the toes. Some of these have been sent to Professor Owen, and are now in the British Museum, where our readers may see them.

And now for the evidence respecting the existence of a white Dodo. In the Illustrated London News, of September, 1856, an engraving appeared of a white Dodo, and a red-necked goose, accompanied by the following information :-"When I was staying with a friend a few days ago, he showed me some old drawings, which he told me were made by an artist in Persia, representing birds of that country. Amongst them was one containing five or six species of waterfowl, all of them common to the north of Europe and Asia, well drawn, and accurately coloured, although somewhat faded by age. The two birds, of which I send you an accurate copy of the same size as the original, are in the foreground. They represent the Anser ruficollis (as any ornithologist will at once recognise), and an unknown species of Dodo, differing considerably from that which formerly inhabited the Isles of Bourbon and Mauritius, in the form and colour of the beak, wings, and tail plumes, as well as in the texture and colour of the plumage, but still bearing a strong

general resemblance to it. Its appearance is so singular, that I should at once have supposed it to be the creature of the artist's imagination, had it not been surrounded by a number of other figures of well-known species; and it is certainly not a little odd that one purely ideal bird should be introduced amongst a group of real ones. I should be glad if any of your ornithological correspondents can throw any light on the matter. The bird figured in company with this nondescript is an inhabitant of northern latitudes; but as it is a bird of passage, with an extensive range, this does not prove that the artist intended to intimate that his Dodo was also a northern bird, though it must have probably been an inhabitant of a much cooler climate than his congener of the Isle of Bourbon. Hortley Lodge, Parkstern.

WM. W. COKER."

The drawing of the two birds was sent to Mr. Gould, the ornithologist, who made the following remarks respecting it:-"The drawing which you have sent for my inspection is not without interest. The front figure is a good representation of the Anser ruficollis; the other appears to me to have been taken from an Albino, or white variety of the Dodo. Now, as everything pertaining to this extinct bird is regarded with great interest, I think it desirable that a drawing of the same size should be published in the Illustrated London News. The Anser doubtless sometimes visits Persia; but I should suppose that the artist had made his sketch of the Dodo from a Mauritius or Bourbon specimen, for we have no evidence that this bird was ever found elsewhere."

I have lately had an opportunity of examining the original drawing alluded to, and possess a photograph of it. It is most carefully and minutely drawn, and coloured in body colours. Besides the two birds which have been mentioned, the drawing contains figures of six others, amongst which are the Tufted Duck (Fuligula cristuta), a Spoonbill, and a Merganser. To me they are evidently drawn from life, as all are in most life-like attitudes. In the left-hand corner of the drawing is the artist's monogram, "P. W.," which a friend has ascertained to be that of Pierre Witthoos, who died at Amsterdam in 1693. The question arises, did the artist make his drawing in Persia as Mr. Coker's friend supposes, or was it not more likely to have been made by Witthoos from menagerie specimens in Holland? It seems undoubted that living specimens of the Dodo were taken to Holland by the Dutch navigators, and there is every reason to believe that the oil painting in the British Museum was painted from life. Why not the drawing of the White Dodo in question? As Mr. Gould remarks, it is a subject of much interest, and makes us long to know something more of the mysterious bird than a mere glance at its portrait. W. J. STERLAND.

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