We doubt the direct affinity to any species of the grallatorial order, an order which contains the cursorial or swift-running birds, very dissimilar in their prevailing habits to anything we know of the sluggish and sedentary Dodo. Professor Brandt may be regarded as having mistaken analogy for affinity; and, in Mr Strickland's opinion, he has in this instance wandered from the true method of investigation, in his anxiety to discover a link connecting dissevered groups.
What then is, or rather was, the Dodo? The majority of inquirers have no doubt been influenced, though unconsciously, by its colossal size, and have consequently sought its actual analogies only among such huge species as the ostrich, the vulture, and the albatross. But the range in each order is often enormous, as, for example, between the Falco cærulescens, or finch falcon of Bengal, an accipitrine bird not bigger than a sparrow, and an eagle of the largest size; or between the swallow-like stormy petrel and the gigantic pelican of the wilderness. It appears that Professor J. T. Rheinhardt of Copenhagen, who rediscovered the cranium of the Gottorf Museum, was the first to indicate the direct relationship of the Dodo to the pigeons. He has recently been engaged in a voyage round the world, but it is known that, before he left Copenhagen in 1845, he had called the attention of his correspondents, both in Sweden and Denmark, to "the striking affinity which exists between this extinct bird and the pigeons, especially the Trerons." The Columbine view is that taken up, and so admirably illustrated, by Mr Strickland, the most recent as well as the best biographer of the Dodo. He refers to the great strength and curvature of bill exhibited by several groups of the tropical fruit-eating pigeons, and adds:
"If we now regard the Dodo as an extreme modification, not of the vultures, but of those vulture-like frugivorous pigeons, we shall, I think, class it in a group whose characters are far more consistent with what we know of its structure and habits. There is no a priori reason why a pigeon should not be so modified, in conformity with external circumstances, as to be incapable of flight, just as we see a grallatorial bird modified into an ostrich, and a diver into a penguin. Now we are told that Mauritius, an island forty miles in length, and about one hundred miles from the nearest land, was, when discovered, clothed with dense forests of palms and various other trees. 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 luxuries 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."—(P. 40.)
For the various osteological and other details by which the Columbine character of the Dodo is maintained, and as we think established, we must refer our readers to Mr Strickland's volume,[22] where those parts of the subject are very skilfully worked out by his able coadjutor, Dr Melville.
We shall now proceed to notice certain other extinct species which form the dead relations of the Dodo, just as the pigeons continue to represent the tribe from which they have departed. The island Rodriguez, placed about three hundred miles eastward of the Mauritius, though not more than fifteen miles long by six broad, possessed in modern times a peculiar bird, also without effective wings, and in several other respects resembling the Dodo. It was named Solitaire by the early voyagers, and forms the species Didus solitarius of systematic writers. The small island in question seems to have remained in a desert and unpeopled state until 1691, when a party of French Protestant refugees settled upon it, and remained for a couple of years. The Solitaire is thus described by their commander, Francois Leguat, who (in his Voyage et Avantures, 1708) has given us an interesting account both of his own doings in general, and of this species in particular.
"Of all the birds in the island, the most remarkable is that which goes by the name of the Solitary, because it is very seldom seen in company, though there are abundance of them. The feathers of the male are of a brown-gray colour, the feet and beak are like a turkey's, but a little more crooked. They have scarce any tail, but their hind part, covered with feathers, is roundish like the crupper of a horse: they are taller than turkeys; their neck is straight, and a little longer in proportion than a turkey's, when it lifts up its head. Its eye is black and lively, and its head without comb or cap. They never fly; their wings are too little to support the weight of their bodies; they serve only to beat themselves, and to flutter when they call one another. They will whirl about for twenty or thirty times together on the same side, during the space of four or five minutes. The motion of their wings makes then a noise very much like that of a rattle, and one may hear it two hundred paces off. The bone of their wing grows greater towards the extremity, and forms a little round mass under the feathers, as big as a musket-ball. That and its beak are the chief defence of this bird. 'Tis very hard to catch it in the woods, but easier in open places, because we run faster than they, and sometimes we approach them without much trouble. From March to September they are extremely fat, and taste admirably well, especially while they are young; some of the males weigh forty-five pounds.
"The females" continues our enamoured author, "are wonderfully beautiful, some fair, some brown,—I call them fair, because they are of the colour of fair hair. They have a sort of peak like a widow's upon their beak, which is of a dun colour. No one feather is straggling from the other all over their bodies, they being very careful to adjust themselves, and make them all even with their beaks. The feathers on their thighs are round like shells at the end, and, being there very thick, have an agreeable effect. They have two risings on their crops, and the feathers are whiter there than the rest, which lively represents the fair neck of a beautiful woman. They walk with so much stateliness and good grace, that one cannot help admiring and loving them; by which means their fine mien often saves their lives. Though these birds will sometimes very familiarly come up near enough to one, when we do not run after them, yet they will never grow tame. As soon as they are caught they shed tears without crying, and refuse all manner of meat till they die."—(P. 71.)
Their natural food is the fruit of a species of plantain. When these birds are about to build, they select a clean place, and then gather together a quantity of palm-leaves, which they heap up about a foot and a half high, and there they sit. They never lay but one egg, which greatly exceeds that of a goose. Some days after the young one has left the nest, a company of thirty or forty grown-up birds brings another young one to it; and the new-fledged bird, with its father and mother, joining with the band, they all march away to some by-place.
"We frequently followed them," says Leguat, "and found that afterwards the old ones went each their way alone, or in couples, and left the two young ones together, and this we called a marriage. This particularity has something in it which looks a little fabulous; nevertheless what I say is sincere truth, and what I have more than once observed with care and pleasure."
Leguat gives a figure of this singular bird, which in his plate has somewhat of the air and aspect of a Christmas goose, although, of course, it wants the web-feet. Its neck and legs are proportionally longer than those parts of the Dodo, and give it more of a struthious appearance: but the existing osteological evidence is sufficient to show that it was closely allied to that bird, and shared with it in some peculiar affinities to the pigeon tribe. It is curious that, although Rodriguez is a British settlement, we have scarcely any information regarding it beyond what is to be found in the work last quoted, and all that we have since learned of the Solitary is that it has become extinct. Of late years Mr Telfair made inquiries of one of the colonists, who assured him that no such bird now existed on the island; and the same negative result was obtained by Mr Higgins, a Liverpool gentleman, who, after suffering shipwreck on Rodriguez, resided there for a couple of months. As far back as 1789, some bones incrusted by a stalagmite, and erroneously supposed to belong to the Dodo, were found in a cave in Rodriguez by a M. Labistour. They afterwards found their way to Paris, where they may still be seen. We are informed (Proceedings of the Zoological Society, Part I. p. 31) that Col. Dawkins recently visited these caverns, and dug without finding any thing but a small bone. But M. Eudes succeeded in disinterring various bones, among others those of a large species of bird no longer found alive upon the island. He adds that the Dutch, who first landed at Rodriguez, left cats there to destroy the rats, which annoyed them. These cats are now so numerous as to prove very destructive to the poultry, and he thinks it probable that these feline wanderers may have extirpated the bird in question, by devouring the young ones as soon as they were hatched,—a destruction which may have been effected even before the island became inhabited by the human race. Be that as it may, Mr Telfair sent collections of the bones to this country, one of which may be seen in the museum of the Andersonian Institution, Glasgow. Mr Strickland mourns over the loss or disappearance of those transmitted to the Zoological Society of London. We have been informed within these few days that, like the head of the Danish Dodo, they have been rediscovered, lying in a stable or other outhouse, in the vicinity of the museum of that Society. Both the Glasgow specimens, and those in Paris, have been carefully examined and compared by Mr Strickland, and their Columbine characters are minutely described by his skilful and accurate coadjutor, Dr Melville, in the second portion of his work. Mr S. very properly regards certain peculiarities, alluded to by Leguat, such as the feeding on dates or plantains, as confirmatory of his view of the natural affinities already mentioned.
So much for the Solitaire of Rodriguez and its affinities.[23] A singular fact, however, remains to be yet attended to in this insular group. The volcanic island of Bourbon seems also to have contained brevi-pennate birds, whose inability to fly has likewise led to their extinction. This island, which lies about a hundred miles south-west of Mauritius, was discovered contemporaneously by Pedro de Mascaregnas, in the sixteenth century. The earliest notice which concerns our present inquiry, is by Captain Castleton, who visited Bourbon in 1613. In the narrative, as given by Purchas, we read as follows:—