We river, which topples over when people come to | theatre-boats, Indians, buffaloes; deserted tents of see it, and keeps all the company at the pumps extinct tribes, and bodies of dead braves, with for dear life. This entertainment, drawing more their pale faces turned up to the night-sky, lying water than money, and being set upon, besides, still and solitary in the wilderness, nearer and by robbers armed with bowie-knives and rifles, is nearer to which the outposts of civilization are apabandoned. Then, he paints a panorama of Ven-proaching with gigantic strides to tread their peoice, and exhibits it in the West successfully, until ple down, and erase their very track from the it goes down in a steamer on the western waters. earth's face-teem with suggestive matter. Then, he sets up a museum at St. Louis, which are not disposed to think less kindly of a country fails. Then, he comes down to Cincinnati, where when we see so much of it, although our sense of he does no better. Then, without a farthing, he its immense responsibility may be increased. rows away on the Ohio in a small boat, and lives, It would be well to have a panorama, three like a wild man, upon nuts; until he sells a re-miles long, of England. There might be places volving pistol, which cost him twelve dollars, for in it worth looking at, a little closer than we see five and twenty. With the proceeds of this com- them now; and worth the thinking of, a little mercial transaction he buys a larger boat, lays in more profoundly. It would be hopeful, too, to a little store of calicoes and cottons, and rows see some things in England, part and parcel of a away again among the solitary settlers along-moving panorama; and not of one that stood still, shore, bartering his goods for beeswax. Thus, or had a disposition to go backward.-Examiner, in course of time, he earns enough to buy a little skiff, and go to work upon the largest picture in the world! 16th Dcc. AN AMERICAN "LADY WILLOUGHBY.' THE Boston Transcript furnishes us with this bit of literary gossip : One of the most striking literary novelties of the season, a literary friend assures us, will be a work purporting to be the Diary of a young girl residing time commencing with the year 1678. Some of in the Colony of Massachusetts during a length of the leaves from this Diary have appeared in the columns of the National Era, published at Washington, where they have attracted great attention both for their beauty of style and the graphic pictures they present of every-day life at an early period in New England. The manner in which this precious document-this waife of the olden time-was discovered, is a curious incident in literary history. We may predict that " Margaret Smith's Journal" will be widely read, and as widely admired. We are indebted to Messrs. Ticknor and Company, the publishers, for an early glance at the proof sheets, from which we make a brief extract, showing the charming style in which the journal is written. The extract is from a leaf dated Ipswich, near Agawam, May ye 12th, 1678: We set out Day before Yesterday on a JourOur Route the first In his little skiff he travels thousands of miles, with no companions but his pencil, rifle, and dog, making the preparatory sketches for the largest picture in the world. Those completed, he erects a temporary building at Louisville, Kentucky, in which to paint the largest picture in the world. Without the least help, even in the grinding of his colors, or the splitting of the wood for his machinery, he falls to work, and keeps at work; maintaining himself meanwhile, and buying more colors, wood, and canvass, by doing odd jobs in the decorative way. At Last he finishes the largest picture in the world, and opens it for exhibition on a stormy night, when not a single "human" comes to see it. Not discouraged yet, he goes about among the boatmen, who are well acquainted with the river, and gives them free admission to the largest picture in the world. The boatmen come to see it, are astonished at it, talk about it. "Our country" wakes up from a rather sullen doze at Louisville, and comes to see it too. The upshot is, that it succeeds; and here it is in Lon-ney to Newberry. don, with its painter standing on a little platform by its side explaining it; and probably, by this time next year, it and he may be in Timbucto. 66 * * Day lay through the Woods and along the Borders of great Marshes, and Meadows on the Sea Shore. We came to Linne at Night, and stopped at the House of a Kinsman of Robert Pike's—a Man of Few can fail to have some interest in such an Substance and Note in that Settlement. We were adventure, and in such an adventurer, and they tired and hungry, and the Supper of warm Indian will both repay it amply. There is a mixture of Bread and sweet Milk relished quite as well as shrewdness and simplicity in the latter, which is any I ever ate in the Old Countrie. The next day very prepossessing; a modesty, and honesty, and we went on over a rough Road, to Wenham, an odd original humor, in his manner of telling through Salem, which is quite a pleasant Town. what he has to tell, that give it a peculiar relish. Here we stopped until this morning, when we The picture itself, as an indisputably true and after a smart Ride of three Hours. The Weather again mounted our Horses, and reached this place faithful representation of a wonderful region in the Morning was warm and soft as are our wood and water, river and prairie, lonely log-hut Summer Days at Home; and as we rode through and clustered city rising in the forest is replete the Woods, where the young Leaves were flutterwith interest throughout. Its incidental revela-ing, and the white Blossoms of the Wind flowers, tions of the different states of society, yet in transi- and the blue Violets, and the yellow blooming of tion, prevailing at different points of these three the Cowslips in the low Grounds, were seen on thousand miles—slaves and free republicans, French and Southerners; immigrants from abroad, and restless Yankees and Down-Easters ever steaming somewhere; alligators, store-boats, show-boats, either hand, and the birds all the time making a From Blackwood's Magazine. worse confounded. The case, indeed, seemed desperate; and had it not been that we always THE DODO AND ITS KINDRED. * entertained a particular regard for old Clusius, (of WHAT was the Dodo? When was the Dodo? whom by-and-by,) and could not get over the fact Where is the Dodo? are all questions, the first that a Dodo's head existed in the Ashmolean Mumore especially, which it is fully more easy to seum, Oxford, and a Dodo's foot in the British ask than answer. Whoever has looked through Museum, London, we would willingly have inbooks on natural history-for example, that noted dulged the thought that the entire Dodo was but now scarce instructor of our early youth, the itself a dream. But, shaking off the cowardly Three Hundred Animals-must have observed a indolence which would seek to shirk the investigasomewhat ungainly creature, with a huge curved tion of so great a question, let us now inquire into bill, a shortish neck, scarcely any wings, a plumy a piece of ornithological biography, which seemed tuft upon the back-considerably on the off-side, so singularly to combine the familiar with the fabthough pretending to be a tail-and a very shape- ulous. Thanks to an accomplished and perseverless body, extraordinarily large and round about ing naturalist of our own day-one of the most the hinder end. This anomalous animal being successful and assiduous inquirers of the younger covered with feathers, and having, in addition to generation--we have now all the facts, and most the other attributes above referred to, only two of the fancies, laid before us in a splendid royal legs, has been, we think justly, regarded as a quarto volume, just published, with numerous bird, and has accordingly been named the Dodo. plates, devoted to the history and illustration of But why it should be so named is another of the the "Dodo and its Kindred." It was, in truth, many mysterious questions, which require to be the latter term that cheered our heart, and led us considered in the history of this unaccountable again towards a subject which had previously procreature. No one alleges, nor can we conceive it duced the greatest despondency; for we had alpossible, that it claims kindred with either of the ways, though most erroneously, fancied that the only two human beings we ever heard of who great misformed lout of our Three Hundred Anibore the name: "And after him (Adino the Ez-mals was all alone in the wide world, unable to nite) was Eleazar the son of Dodo, the Ahohite, provide for himself, (and so, fortunately, without one of the three mighty men with David, when a family,) and had never, in truth, had either prethey defied the Philistines that were there gath-decessors or posterity. Mr. Strickland, however, ered together to battle, and the men of Israel were has brought together the disjecta membra of a famgone away.' Our only other human Dodo be-ily group, showing not only fathers and mothers, longed to the fair sex, and was the mother of the sisters and brothers, but cousins, and kindred of famous Zoroaster, who flourished in the days of all degrees. Their sedate and somewhat sedenDarius Hystaspes, and brought back the Persians tary mode of life is probably to be accounted for, to their ancient fire-worship, from the adoration not so much by their early habits as their latter of the twinkling stars. The name appears to end. Their legs are short, their wings scarcely have been dropped by both families, as if they existent, but they are prodigiously large and heavy were somewhat ashamed of it; and we feel as in the hinder-quarters; and organs of flight would sured that of such of our readers as admit that have been but a vain thing for safety, as they could Zoroaster must have had a mother of some sort, not, in such wooded countries as these creatures very few really remember nowadays that her name inhabited, have been made commensurate with the was Dodo. There were no baptismal registers in uplifting of such solid bulk, placed so far behind those times; or, if such existed, they were doubt that centre of gravity where other wings are less consumed in the " 'great fire"a sort of pe- worked. We can now sit down in Mr. Strickriodical, it may be providential, mode of shorten- land's company, to discuss the subject, not only ing the record, which seems to occur from time to tranquilly, but with a degree of cheerfulness which time in all civilized countries. we have not felt for many a day; thanks to his But while the creature in question—we mean | kindly consideration of the Dodo and "its kinthe feathered biped-has been continuously pre-dred." sented to view in those "vain repetitions" which unfortunately form the mass of our information in all would-be popular works on natural history, we had actually long been at a stand-still in relation to its essential attributes-the few competent authorities who had given out their opinion upon this, as many thought, stereotyped absurdity, being so disagreed among themselves as to make confusion *The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinitics, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and other Extinct Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon. By H. E. STRICKLAND, M. A. F. G. S., F. R. G. S., President of the Ashmolean Society, &c., and A. G. MELVILLE, M.D., Edinburgh, M. R. C. S. One vol., royal quarto. London: 1848. The geographical reader will remember that to the eastward of the great, and to ourselves nearly unknown, island of Madagascar, there lies a small group of islands of volcanic origin, which, though not exactly contiguous among themselves, are yet nearer to each other than to the greater island just named, and which is interposed between them and the coast of Southern Africa. They are named Rodriguez, Bourbon, and Mauritius, or the Isle of France. There is proof that not fewer than four distinct species of large-bodied, short-winged birds, of the Dodo type, were their inhabitants in comparatively recent times, and have now become utterly extinct. We say utterly, because neither proof nor vestige of their existence elsewhere has dividuals which compose it--although the life of Now, it is this recent and total extinction which renders the subject one of more than ordinary interest. Death is an admitted law of nature, in respect to the individuals of all species. Geology, dragging at each remove a lengthened chain," has shown how, at different and distant eras, innumerable tribes have perished and been supplanted, or at least replaced, by other groups of species, entire races, better fitted for the great climatic and other physical changes, which our earth's surface has undergone from time to time. How these changes were brought about, many, with more or less success, (generally less,) have tried to say. Organic remains-that is, the fossilized remnants of ancient species-sometimes indicate a long continuance of existence, generation after generation living in tranquillity, and finally sinking in a quiet grave; while other examples show a sudden and violent death, in tortuous and excited action, as if they had been almost instantaneously overwhelmed and destroyed by some great catastrophe. exists now only in the forest of Bialowicksa, from whence the Emperor of Russia has recently transmitted a living pair to the Zoological Society of London. Several kinds of birds are also evidently on their last legs. For example, a singular species of parrot, (Nestor productus,) with the termination of the upper mandible much attenuated, peculiar to Phipps' Island, near Norfolk Island, has recently ceased to exist there in the wild state, and is now known as a living species only from a few surviving specimens kept in cages, and which refuse to breed. The burrowing parrot from New Zealand is already on the road to ruin; and more than one species of that singular and wingless bird, called Apteryex, also from the lastnamed island, may be placed in the same category. Even in our own country, if the landed proprietors were to yield to the clamor of the anti-game-law league, the red grouse or moor-game might cease to be, as they occur nowhere else on the known earth save in Britain and the Emerald Isle. Placed far amid the melancholy main. Several local extinctions, of elsewhere existing species are known to naturalists-such as those of the beaver, and bear, and the wolf, which no longer occur in Great Britain, though historically The geographical distribution of animals, in known, as well as organically proved by recent general, has been made conformable to laws which remains, to have lived and died among us. Their we cannot fathom. A mysterious relationship extinction was slow and gradual, and resulted en- exists between certain organic structures and those tirely from the inroads which the human race-districts of the earth's surface which they inhabit. that is, the increase of population, and the pro- Certain extensive groups, in both the animal and gress of agriculture and commerce- -necessarily vegetable kingdom, are found to be restricted to made upon their numbers, which thus became particular continents, and their neighboring islands. few by degrees, and beautifully less." The Of some the distribution is very extensive, while beaver might have carried on business well others are totally unknown except within a limited enough, in his own quiet way, although frequent-space, such as some solitary isle, ly incommoded by the love of peltry on the part of a hat-wearing people! but it is clear that no man with a small family, and a few respectable In the present state of science, (says Mr. farm-servants, could either permit a large and Strickland,) we must be content to admit the existence of this law, without being able to enunciate hungry wolf to be continually peeping at mid- its preamble. It does not imply that organic distrinight through the key-hole of the nursery, or al-bution depends on soil and climate; for we often low a brawny bruin to snuff too frequently under find a perfect identity of these conditions in oppothe kitchen-door, (after having hugged the watch- site hemispheres, and in remote continents, whose dog to death,) when the serving-maids were at supper. The extirpation, then, of at least two of those quondam British species became a work of necessity and mercy, and might have been tolerated even on a Sunday between sermons-especially as naturalists have it still in their power to study the habits of similar wild beasts, by no means yet extinct, in the neighboring countries of France and Germany. But the death of the Dodo and its kindred is a more affecting fact, as involving the extinction of an entire race, root and branch, and proving that death is a law of the species, as well as of the in It fauna and flora are almost wholly diverse. already established in the adjacent localities, rather than to proceed per saltum by introducing forms of more foreign aspect. In conformity with this relation between geographical distribution and organic structure, it has been ascertained that a small portion of the indigenous animals and plants of the islands of Rodriguez, Bourbon, and the Isle of France, are either allied to or identical with the productions of continental Africa, a larger portion with those of Madagascar, while certain species are altogether peculiar to the insular group above named. rative of the voyage, of which there are several accounts in different tongues, we find the following notice : This island, besides being very fertile in terrestrial products, feeds vast numbers of birds, such as turtle-doves, which occur in such plenty that three of our men sometimes captured one hundred and fifty in half a day, and might easily have taken more by hand, or killed them with sticks, if we had not been overloaded with the burden of them. Grey parrots are also common there, and other birds, besides a large kind bigger than our swans, with large heads, half of which is covered with skin like a hood. These birds want wings, in And as these three islands form a detached clus-place of which are three or four thickish feathers. ter, as compared to other lands, so do we find in The tail consists of a few slender curved feathers them a peculiar group of birds, specifically different of a grey color. We called them Walckvogel, in each island, yet allied together in their general for this reason, that, the longer they were boiled, characters, and remarkably isolated from any known the tougher and more uneatable they became. forms in other parts of the world. These birds Their stomachs, however, and breasts, were easy were of large size and grotesque proportions, the to masticate. Another reason for the name was wings too short and feeble for flight, the plumage that we had an abundance of turtle-doves, of a much loose and decomposed, and the general aspect sug- sweeter and more agreeable flavor.-De Bry's Ingestive of gigantic immaturity. Their history is as dia Orientalis, (1601,) pars v. p. 7. remarkable as their origin. About two centuries ago, their native isles were first colonized by man, These walckvogel were the birds soon afterby whom these strange creatures were speedily ex-wards called Dodos. The description given by terminated. So rapid and so complete was their Clusius, in his Exotica, (1605,) is chiefly taken extinction, that the vague descriptions given of them from one of the published accounts of Van Neck's by early navigators were long regarded as fabulous or exaggerated; and these birds, almost contem-voyage; but he adds the following notice, as from poraries of our great-grandfathers, became associat-personal observation :— ed in the minds of many persons with the griffin and the phoenix of mythological antiquity. After I had written down the history of this bird as well as I could, I happened to see in the house of Peter Pauwius, professor of medicine in the University of Leyden, a leg cut off at the knee, and recently brought from the Mauritius. It was not very long, but rather exceeded four inches from the knee to the bend of the foot. Its thickness, how The aim and object of Mr. Strickland's work is to vindicate the honesty of the rude voyagers of the seventeenth century; to collect together the scattered evidence regarding the Dodo and its kindred; to describe and depict the few anatomi-ever, was great, being nearly four inches in circal fragments which are still extant of those lost species; to invite scientific travellers to further and more minute research; and to infer, from the authentic data now in hand, the probable rank and position of these creatures in the scale of nature. We think he has achieved his object very admirably, and has produced one of the best and most interesting monographs with which it is our fortune to be acquainted. So far as we can see, the extension of man's more immediate influence and agency is the sole cause of the disappearance of species in modern times—at least, we have no proof that any of these species have perished by what can be called a catastrophe; this is well exemplified by what we now know of the Dodo and its kindred. cumference; and it was covered with numerous scales, which in front were wider and yellow, but smaller and dusky behind. The upper part of the while the lower part was wholly callous. The toes toes was also furnished with single broad scales, were rather short for so thick a leg; the claws were all thick, hard, black, less than an inch long; but the claw of the hind toe was longer than the rest, and exceeded an inch. A Dutch navigator, Heemskerk, remained nearly three months on the Mauritius, on his homeward voyage in 1602; and in a published journal kept by Reyer Cornelisz, we read of Wallichvogels, and a variety of other game. One of Heemskerk's captains, Willem van West-Zanen by name, also left a journal-apparently not published until 1648-at which time it was edited in an enlarged form by H. Soeteboom. We there find repeated mention of Dod-aarsen, or Dodos; and the sailors seem to have actually revelled in these birds, without suffering from surfeit or nausea like Van Neck's appeared in an English form, we shall avail ourAs this tract is very rare, and has never selves of Mr. Strickland's translation of a few pas crew. The islands of Mauritius and Bourbon were discovered in the sixteenth century, (authorities differ as to the precise period, which they vary from 1502 to 1545,) by Pedro Mascaregnas, a Portuguese, who named the latter after himself; while he called the former Cerne, a term applied by Pliny to an island in another quarter. Of this Cerne nothing definite was ascertained till the year 1598, when the Dutch, under Jacob Corne-sages bearing on the subject in question :— lius Neck, finding it uninhabited, took possession, The sailors went out every day to hunt for birds and changed its name to Mauritius. In the nar- and other game, such as they could find on land. while they became less active with their nets, hooks, the Dutch root, Dodoor, which signifies sluggard, and other fishing tackle. No quadrupeds occur there and is appropriate to the leisurely gait and heavy except cats, though our countrymen have subse quently introduced goats and swine. The herons aspect of the creatures in question. Dodars is were less tame than the other birds, and were diffi- probably a homely or familiar phrase among Dutch cult to procure, owing to their flying amongst the thick sailors, and may be regarded as moro expressive branches of the trees. They also caught birds which than elegant. Our own Sir Thomas Herbert was some name Dod-aarsen, others Dronten. When the first to use the name of Dodo in its modern Jacob Van Neck was here, these birds were called form, and he tells us that it is a Portuguese word. Wallich-vogels, because even a long boiling would Doudo, in that language, certainly signifies "foolscarcely make them tender, but they remained tough ish,' 66 or simple," ," and might have been well apand hard, with the exception of the breast and belly, which were very good; and also because, from the plied to the unwary habits and defenceless condition abundance of turtle-doves, which the men procured, of these almost wingless and totally inexperienced they became disgusted with dodos. The figure of species; but, as none of the Portuguese voyagers these birds is given in the accompanying plate; seem to have mentioned the Dodo by any name they have great heads, with hoods thereon; they whatever, nor even to have visited the Mauritius, are without wings or tail, and have only little wing- after their first discovery of the island by Pedro lets on their sides, and four or five feathers behind, Mascaregnas already named, it appears far more more elevated than the rest; they have beaks and feet, and commonly, in the stomach, a stone the probable that Dodars is a genuine Dutch term, alsize of a fist. tered, and it may be amended, by Sir Thomas Herbert to suit his own philological fancies. The dodos, with their round sterns, (for they were well fattened,) were also obliged to turn tail; everything that could move was in a bustle; and the fish, which had lived in peace for many a year, were pursued into the deepest waterpools. * * The Dutch, indeed, seem to have been inspired with a genuine love of Dodos, and never allowed even the cooing of the delicately tender turtle-doves to prevent their laying in an ample store of the On the 25th July, William and his sailors brought some dodos, which were very fat; the whole crew more solid, if less substantial, species. Thus, Van made an ample meal from three or four of them, and der Hagen, who commanded two ships which rea portion reinained over. They sent on mained for some weeks at the Mauritius in 1607, board smoked fish, salted dodos, land-tortoises, and not only feasted his crews on great abundance of other game, which supply was very acceptable."tortoises, dodars, grey paroquets, and other game," They were busy for some days bringing provisions but salted large quantities for consumption during to the ship. On the 4th of August, William's men the voyage. Verhuffen touched at the same island brought fifty large birds on board the Bruyn-Vis; in 1611, and it is in his narrative (published at among them were twenty-four or twenty-five dodos, so large and heavy, that they could not eat any two Frankfort in 1613) that Dodos are called Totersten. of them for dinner, and all that remained over was He describes them as havingsalted. Another day, Hoogeven (William's supercargo) set out from the tent with four seamen, provided with sticks, nets, muskets, and other necessaries for hunting. They climbed up mountain and hill, roamed through forest and valley, and, during the three days that they were out, they captured another half-hundred of birds, including a matter of twenty dodos, all which they brought on board and salted. Thus were they, and the other crews in the fleet, occupied in fowling and fishing. A skin like a monk's cowl on the head, and no wings; but, in place of them, about five or six yel- are wont We are glad to be informed, by the above, of this attempt at independence, or something at least approaching to the defensive system. It forms an additional title on the part of the Dodo, to be regarded, at all events by the Dutch cuisiniers, as une pièce de resistance." In regard to the appellations of these birds, it is not altogether easy to determine the precise date at which the synonymous term Dodars, from which our name of Dodo is by some derived, was introduced. It seems first to occur in the journal of Willem van West-Zanen; but that journal, though written in 1603, appears to have remained unpublished till 1648, and the name may have been an interpolation by his editor Soeteboom. Matelief's journal, also, which makes mention of Dodaersen, otherwise Dronten, was written in 1606, and Van der Hagen's in 1607; but Mr. Strickland has been unable to find an edition of either work of earlier date than 1646, and so the occurrence of these words may be likewise due to the officiousness of editors. Perhaps the earliest use of the word Dodars may date from the publication of Verhuffen's voyage, (1613,) where, however, it occurs under the corrupt form of Totersten. There seems little doubt that the name of Dodo is derived from The dodo, a bird the Dutch call walckvögel or Sir Thomas Herbert, already named, visited the Mauritius in 1627, and found it still uninhabited by man. In his Relation of some Yeares' Travaile, which, for the amusement of his later years, he seems to have repeatedly rewritten for various editions, extending from 1634 to 1677, he both figures His narration is as and describes our fat friend. follows: |