DODO, from the Portuguese Doudo (a simpleton1), a large bird formerly inhabiting the island of Mauritius, but now 'extinct-the Didus ineptus of Linnæus.

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 Ilha do Cisne-perhaps but a corruption of Cerne, 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. However, 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), ia, 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 Walchvögel 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 Gallus peregrinus," 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. 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, which he minutely describes. Of late years a copy of Clusius's work has been discovered in the high

1 Alewyn and Collé, in their Woordenschat der twee Taalen Portugeesch 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), were taken. Prof. Schlegel has announced his intention of immediately publishing these sketches in fac-simile.

3 The etymology of these names has 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 (Veral. en Mededeel. K. Akad. Wetensch. ii. pp. 255 et 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. Broderip and the late Dr Gray have suggested its identity with that aow in the British Museum, but on what grounds is not apparent.

school of Utrecht, in which is pasted an original drawing by Van de Venne superscribed "Vera effigies huius avis Walghvogel (quæ & a nautis Dodaers propter fœdam posterioris partis crassitiem nuncupatur), qualis viua Amsterodamum perlata est ex insula Mauritii. 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, havo 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 horn 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 Schönborn collection at Pommersfelden near Bamberg, and that belonging to Dr Seyffery 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.

In 1628 we have the evidence of the first English observer 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. In one he says: "You shall receue. a strange fowle: which I had at the Iland 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 liue." 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 (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 Phoenix (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, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1874, pp. 447-449. I.e., Rodriguez; an error, as we shall see. VII. 41

was weak as an etymologist, but his positive statement, corroborated as it is by Altham, cannot be set aside, and hence we do not hesitate to assign a Portuguese derivation for the word. Herbert also gave a figure of the bird. Proceeding chronologically we next come upon a curious bit of evidence. This is contained in a MS. diary kept between 1626 and 1640 by Thomas Crossfield of Queen's College, Oxford, where, under the year 1634, mention is casually made of one Mr Gosling " who bestowed the Dodar (a blacke Indian bird) vpon ye Anatomy school." Nothing more is known of it. About 1638, Sir Hamon Lestrange tells us, as he walked London streets he saw the picture of a strange fowl hung out on a cloth canvas, and going in to see it found a great bird kept in a chamber "somewhat bigger than the largest Turky cock, and so legged and footed, but shorter and thicker." The keeper called it a Dodo and shewed the visitors how his captive would swallow "large peble stones..... as bigge as nutmegs." In 1651 Morisot published an account of a voyage made by François Cauche, who professed to have passed fifteen days in Mauritius, or "l'isle de Saincte Apollonie," as he called it, in 1638. According to De Flacourt the narrative is not very trustworthy, and indeed certain statements are obviously inaccurate. Cauche says he saw there birds bigger than Swans, which he describes so as to leave no doubt of his meaning Dodos; but perhaps the most important facts (if they be facts) that he relates are that they had a cry like a Gosling ("il a un cry comme l'oison"), and that they laid a single white egg, gros comme un pain d'un sol," on a mass of grass in the forests. He calls them "oiseaux de Nazaret," perhaps, as a marginal note informs us, from an island of that name which was then supposed to lie more to the northward, but is now known to have no existence.

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In the catalogue of Tradescant's Collection of Rarities, preserved at South Lambeth, published in 1656, we have entered among the "Whole Birds a Dodar from the island Mauritius; it is not able to flie being so big." This specimen may well have been the skin of the bird seen by Lestrange some eighteen years before, but anyhow we are able to trace the specimen through Willughby, Lhwyd, and Hyde, till it passed in or before 1684 to the Ashmolean collection at Oxford. In 1755 it was ordered to be destroyed, but, in accordance with the original orders of Ashmole, its head and right foot were preserved, and still ornament the Museum of that University. In the second edition of a Catalogue of many Natural Rarities, &c., to be seen at the place formerly called the Music House, near the West End of St Paul's Church, collected by one Hubert alias Forbes, and published in 1665, mention is made of a "legge of a Dodo, a great heavy bird that cannot fly; it is a Bird of the Mauricius Island." This is supposed to have subsequently passed into the possession of the Royal Society. At all events such a specimen is included in Grew's list of their treasures which was published in 1681. This was afterwards transferred to the British Museum, where it still reposes. As may be seen it is a left foot, without the integuments, but it differs sufficiently in size from the Oxford specimen to forbid its having been part of the same individual. In 1666 Olearius brought out the Gottorffisches Kunst Kammer, wherein he describes the head of a Walghvogel, which some sixty years later was removed to the Museum at Copenhagen, and is now preserved there, 1 Hence we venture to dispute Prof. Schlegel's supposed origin of "Dodo." The Portuguese must have been the prior nomenclators, and if, as is most likely, some of their nation, or men acquainted with their language, were employed to pilot the Hollanders, we see at once how the first Dutch name Walghvogel would give way. The meaning of Doudo not being plain to the Dutch, they would, as is the habit of sailors, convert it into something they did understand. Then Doduers would easily suggest itself.

having been the means of first leading zoologists, under the guidance of Prof. Reinhardt, to recognize the true affinities of the bird.

Little more remains to be told. For brevity's sake we have passed over all but the principal narratives of voyagers or other notices of the bird. A compendious bibliography, up to the year 1848, will be found in Strickland's classical work,2 and the list was continued by Von Frauenfeld3 for twenty years later. The last evidence we have of the Dodo's existence is furnished by a journal kept by Benj. Harry, and now in the British Museum (MSS. Addit. 3668. 11. D). This shows its survival till 1681, but the writer's sole remark upon it is that its "flesh is very hard." The successive occupation of the island by different masters seems to have destroyed every tradition relating to the bird, and doubts began to arise whether such a creature had ever existed. Duncan, in 1828, shewed how ill-founded these doubts were, and some ten years later Broderip with much diligence collected all the available evidence into an admirable essay, which in its turn was succeeded by Strickland's monograph just mentioned. But in the meanwhile little was done towards obtaining any material advance in our knowledge, Prof. Reinhardt's determination of its affinity to the Pigeons (Columba) excepted; and it was hardly until Clark's discovery in 1865 (BIRDS, vol. iii. p. 732) of a large number of Dodos' remains, that zoologists generally were prepared to accept that affinity without question. The examination of bone after bone by Prof. Owen and others confirmed the judgment of the Danish naturalist, and there is now no possibility of any different view being successfully maintained.

The causes which led to the extirpation of this ponderous Pigeon have been discussed in a former article, and nothing new can be added on that branch of the subject; but it will be remembered that the Dodo does not stand alone in its fate, and that two more or less nearly allied birds inhabiting the sister islands of Réunion and Rodriguez have in like manner disappeared from the face of the earth. (A. N.)

DODONA, in Epirus, was the seat of the most ancient and venerable of all Hellenic sanctuaries. In the plain of the Dodonea, and on the banks of the neighbouring Acheloüs, there dwelt in times long anterior to history the race of Helli or Hellenes, who thence spread into Thessaly and Greece. In after times the Greeks of the south looked on the inhabitants of Epirus as barbarians; nevertheless for Dodona they always preserved a certain reverence, and the temple there was the object of frequent missions from them. This temple was dedicated to the Pelasgic Zeus, the wielder of the thunderbolt in the storms so frequent in Epirus. Connected with the temple was an oracle which enjoyed more reputation in Greece than any other save that at Delphi, and which would seem to date from more early times than the worship of Zeus; for the normal method of gathering the responses of the oracle was by listening to the rustling of an old oak tree, which was supposed to be the seat of the deity, and by taking thence an augury of the future. We seem here to have a remnant of the very ancient and widely diffused tree-worship. Sometimes, however, auguries were taken in other manners, being drawn from the moaning of doves in the branches, the murmur of a fountain which rose close by, or the resounding of the wind in the brazen tripods which formed a circle all round the temple. The oracle was thus, compared with the articulate responses of Delphi, dumb, but none the less constantly consulted. Croesus proposed

The Dodo and its Kindred, &c. By H. E. Strickland and A. G. Melville. London: 1848. 4to.

Neu aufgefundene Abbildung des Dronte, u. s. w. Erläutert von Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld. Wien 1868. fol.

orders he relinquished his fellowship in 1666, and resided for some time at Oxford, Dublin, and London successively. In 1688 he was elected Canden professor of history at Oxford; but in 1691 he was deprived of his professorship for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance to William and Mary. Retiring to Shottesbrooke in Berkshire, and living on the produce of a small estate in Ireland, which he had at first generously relinquished in favour of a near relation, he devoted himself to those literary labours in chronology and ecclesiastical polity on which his fame now rests. In the former department he published-Discourse on the Phenician History of Sanchoniathon (1681); Annales Thucydidei et Xenophontei (1696); Chronologia Græco Romana pro Hypothesibus Dion. Halicarnassei (1692); Annales Velleiani, Quintiliani, Statiani (1698); and a larger treatise entitled De Veteribus Græcorum Romanorumque Cyclis, obiterque de Cyclo Judæorum ac Etate Christi, Dissertationes (1701). All these obtained considerable reputation, and were frequently reprinted. Gibbon speaks of his learning as "immense," and says that his skill in employing facts is equal to his learning." In the department of ecclesiastical polity his works are more numerous and of much less value, his judgment being far inferior to his power of research. In his earlier writings he was regarded as one of the greatest champions of the non-jurors; but the absurd doctrine which he afterwards promulgated, that immortality could be enjoyed only by those who had received baptism from the hands of one set of regularly ordained clergy, and was therefore a privilege from which dissenters were hopelessly excluded, justly deprived him of the confidence even of his friends. It is interesting, however, in view of the recent revival of the same doctrine, to know that he published in 1706 a treatise professing to prove from Scripture and the first fathers that the soul is naturally mortal. Dodwell died at Shottesbrooke, 7th June 1711. His eldest son Henry is known as the author of a pamphlet entitled Christianity not founded on Argument, to which a reply was published by his brother William, who was besides engaged in a controversy with Dr Conyers Middleton on the subject of miracles.

DOG, a name common to several species of Canida-a family of Carnivorous Mammals widely distributed over nearly every part of the globe. Many of the species belonging to this family, as the wolf and the jackal, are social animals, hunting in packs, and are readily tamed; while in confinement they show little or no repugance to breeding. In a group thus eminently capable of domestication, it is not surprising that in the earliest times one or more species should have been brought under the dominion of man, or that under human care the domestic dog should have become, as Baron Cuvier calls it, "the completest, the most singular, and the most useful conquest ever made by man." There is sufficient evidence to show that the dog existed in the domesticated state during prehistoric times; consequently neither history nor tradition is available to solve the question of its origin. That must be decided, if at all, by the naturalist, and the variety of opinion existing on this point at the present time renders it exceedingly improbable that the parentage of the dog will ever be ascertained with certainty. Some suppose that all our breeds have sprung from a single wild source, others that they are the product of the blending of several distinct species. Of the former, the majority regard the wolf as the parent form, others favour the claims of the jackal, while a few regard them as the descendants of an extinct species, and point to the fossil remains of a large dog, found in the later Tertiary deposits, as the probable wild stock. The prevalent belief at the present day is probably that which regards the domestic dog as the pro

The

duct of the crossing of several species, living and extinet. This opinion is founded on such considerations as the presence in the earliest historic times of many breeds (totally distinct from each other, and nearly resembling existing forms), the existence of wild species of dogs in all quarters of the globe, the fondness of savage man for taming wild animals, and the extreme improbability that among so many presumably equally tameable canine species only one should have been chosen for domestication. Nor is it to be forgotten, as Darwin has well shown, that fear of man in most wild animals is a gradually acquired instinct, and that before its acquirement a wild species would have been much more readily tamed than after. Thus the wild dog of the Falkland Islands (Canis antarcticus), when these were first visited by man, approached him without sign either of fear or of aversion. The weightiest reason for this opinion, however, lies in the fact that many of the breeds of domestic dogs, found in different countries, bear a more or less striking resemblance to the wild species still existing in those countries. The Esquimaux dogs of North America so closely resemble the wolf of the same regions, both in appearance and in voice, that Sir J. Richardson on one occasion mistook a pack of those wild animals for a troop of Indian dogs; and the Indians are said to take the young of wolves in order to improve their canine breed, which would seem to prove that the dog and wolf are sufficiently fertile inter se. Hare Indian or Mackenzie River Dog, although somewhat smaller in size than the prairie wolf (Canis latrans) occurring in the same regions,. so resembles the latter that Richardson could detect no decided difference in form. It seer, in fact, to bear the same relation to the prairie wolf that the Esquimaux dog does to the great grey wolf already mentioned. The wolf certainly exhibits few peculiarly dog-like qualities, being both ferocious and cowardly, and showing no attachment to man; but instances, nevertheless, are on record of tamed wolves which in their gentleness, in love for their masters, and in intelligence, showed true dog-like capacity. The Esquimaux dogs are likewise decidedly wolfish in disposition, showing little or no attachment to their owners, and sometimes, it is said, even attacking them when pressed by hunger. Distinct varieties of the wolf occur in Europe and in India, and such European breeds as the shepherd dog of Hungary so closely resemble the wolf that an Hungarian has been known to mistake that animal for one of his own dogs; while certain of the Hindu pariah dogs are said by Blyth to resemble the Indian variety of wolf. The large semi-domesticated dogs of the northern parts of both hemispheres may thus be regarded as principally derived from the various species and varieties of wolves still existing there. The period of gestation in the wolf and dog is the same, being 63 days in both. In the tropical regions of the Old World the wolf disappears, and with it the prevalence of wolf-like dogs, their places being taken by smaller breeds, such as certain of the pariah dogs of India and of Egypt, between which and the jackals abounding in those countries no structural difference can, according to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, be pointed out. Their period of gestation agrees with that of the dog and wolf, and like dogs, tamed jackals when caressed "will," says Darwin, "jump about for joy, wag their tails, lower their ears, lick their master's hands, couch down and even throw themselves on the ground belly upwards;" when frightened, also, they carry their tails between their legs. Jackals associate readily with dogs, and their hybrid offspring are not sterile; there is also an instance on record of one of these which barked like an ordinary dog. The habit of barking, so characteristic of dogs, is not, however, universal among them, the domestic dogs of Guinea and certain Mexican breeds being described