Alfred Newton and Hans Friedrich Gadow

“ The dodo is said to have inhabited forests and to have laid one large white egg on a mass of grass. Besides man, hogs and other imported animals seem to have exterminated it. But the dodo is not the only member of its family that has vanished. The little island which has successively borne the name of Mascaregnas, England’s Forest, Bourbon and Réunion, and lies to the southward of Mauritius, had also an allied bird, now dead and gone. ”

“ In marked contrast to such artless care stand the wonderful structures which others, such as the tailor-bird, the bottle-titmouse or the fantail-warbler, build for the comfort or safety of their young. ”

“ 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. II. D) . This shows its survival till 1681, but the writer’s sole remark upon it is that its “fflesh 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. ”

“ Certain it is that some birds whether by mistake or stupidity do not infrequently lay their eggs in the nests of others. It is within the knowledge of many that pheasants' eggs and partridges' eggs are often laid in the same nest, and gulls' eggs have been found in the nests of eider-ducks and vice versa; a redstart and a pied flycatcher will lay their eggs in the same convenient hole the forest being rather deficient in such accommodation; an owl and a duck will resort to the same nest-box, set up by a scheming woodsman for his own advantage ”

“ In 1598 the Dutch, under Van Neck, took possession of the island 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 Walgvögels (the word is variously spelled) , i.e. nauseous birds, either because no cooking made them palatable, or because this island-paradise afforded an abundance of fare so much superior. ”

“ The apteryx seems to entrust its abnormally big egg to an excavation among the roots of a tree-fern; while a band of female ostriches scrape holes in the desert-sand and therein promiscuously drop their eggs and leave the task of incubation to the male. Some megapodes bury their eggs in sand, leaving them to come to maturity by the mere warmth of the ground, while others raise a huge hotbed of dead leaves wherein they deposit theirs, and the young are hatched without further care on the part of either parent. ”

“ The golden eagle, too, remarkably adapts itself to circumstances, now rearing its young on a precipitous ledge, now on the arm of an ancient monarch of the forest and again on a treeless plain, making a humble home amid grass and herbage. ”

“ 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: “The Dodo comes first to a description: here, and in Dygarrois [3] (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:) ” &c. ”

“ A round mass of bone, “as big as a musket ball,” was developed on the wings of the males, and they used it as a weapon of offence while they whirled themselves about twenty or thirty times in four or five minutes, making a noise with their pinions like a rattle. ”

“ The magpie, as though self-conscious that its own thieving habits may be imitated by its neighbours, surrounds its nest with a hedge of thorns. Very many birds of almost every group bore holes in some sandy cliff, and at the end of their tunnel deposit their eggs with or without bedding. ”

“ But though in a general way the dictates of hereditary instinct are rigidly observed by birds, in many species a remarkable degree of elasticity is exhibited, or the rule of habit is rudely broken. Thus the falcon, whose ordinary eyry is on the beetling cliff, will for the convenience of procuring prey condescend to lay its eggs on the ground in a marsh, or appropriate the nest of some other bird in a tree. ”

“ 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, Edward Llwyd and Thomas Hyde, till it passed in or before 1684 to the Ashmolean collection at Oxford. ”

“ The egg of the parasite is introduced into the nest of the dupe, and after the necessary incubation by the fond fool of a foster-mother the interloper successfully counterfeits the heirs, who perish miserably, victims of his superior strength. ”

“ 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 Walghvögel 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 Dodaers would easily suggest itself. ↑ The Dodo and its Kindred, by H. E. Strickland and A. G. Melville (London, 1848, 4to) . ”

“ The instinct of finding food for the family is predominant, and where most food is there will the feeders be gathered together. This explains, in all likelihood, the associated bands of ospreys or fish-hawks, which in North America breed (or used to breed) in large companies where sustenance is plentiful, though in the Old World the same species brooks not the society of aught but its mate. ”

“ Dr Henry Duncan, Scottish minister and journalist, in 1828, showed how ill-founded these doubts were, and some ten years later William John 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 (Columbae) excepted ”

“ Birds in which the plumage of both sexes is showy or brilliant in colour, and which nidificate in open nests. This group forms one of those exceptions which at first sight appear seriously to affect the validity of Wallace's theory. In most of the cases, however, the birds, as, for instance, crows, gulls, herons, are either well able to defend themselves and their nests or, as, for instance, the sandpipers, they seek safety for themselves in flight, relying upon the protective tints of their eggs or young. ”

“ The eggs of owls are always white, whether they be deposited in holes on the bare ground or in open nests in a tree. The eggs of the goshawk are white, but those of its small relation, the sparrowhawk, are always blotched, the nest of both being built precisely in the same kind of position, &c. ”

“ In all such cases it is not possible to say which species is so constituted as to obtain the mastery, but it is not difficult to conceive that in the course of ages that which was driven from its home might thrive through the fostering of its young by the invader, and thus the abandonment of domestic habits and duties might become a direct gain to the evicted householder. ”

“ Speaking broadly, the largest birds lay the largest eggs and require the longest time for incubation, but there are very many exceptions, and only birds of the same group can be compared with each other. ”

“ The condition of the newly hatched birds also varies extremely. The Nidifugae are born with their eyes open, are thinly clothed with neossoptiles of simple structure, leave the nest on the first day and feed themselves. The Nidicolae are born blind, remain a long time in the nest and have to be fed by their parents. ”

“ Some of the grebes and rails seem to avail themselves in a less degree of the heat generated by vegetable decay and, dragging from the bottom or sides of the waters they frequent fragments of aquatic plants, form of them a rude half-floating mass which is piled on some growing water-weed—but these birds do not spurn the duties of maternity. ”

“ In regard to the almost countless cases of spotted eggs in holes or covered nests, of which so many groups of birds furnish examples either wholly or in part, it has been suggested that the species in question has taken to hiding its eggs in times comparatively recent, and has not yet got rid of the ancestral habit of secreting and despositing pigment. ”