■ list of tie species which tie picture sufficiently evinced that-tfce artist iad had the opportunity to study
ahve. Judge of my surprise and pleasure in detecting in a dark comer of .the picture (which is badly
hung between two windows) the Dodo, beautifully finished, showing for example, though but three
inches long, the auricular circle of feathers, the scutation of the tarsi, and f i e loose structure of the
caudal plumes. In the number and proportions of the toes, and in general form, it accords with
Edwards’s oil painting in the British Museum; and I conclude that the miniature must have been copied
m the stalJJ of a wludb it is most probable, formed part of the Mauritian menagerie.
The bird us standing in profile with a lizard at its feet. Not any of the Dutch naturalists to whom I
applied for information respecting the picture, the artist, and his subject, seemed to be aware of the
existence of this evidence of the Dodo in. the Hague collection.”—Penny Cyclopedia, v^xxiii. p. 148.
3. Shortly after visiting the Hague in 1 8 4 5 ,1 made a search in the Royal Gallery at
Berlin, which contains several of Roland Savery’s highly finished paintings. Among them I
found one which represents numerous animals in Paradise, one of which is a Dodo, of about
the same size and in nearly the same attitude as the figure last mentioned. But whit renders
this pictm-e peculiarly interesting is, that it affords us a date, the words “ Roelandt Savenr
fe. 1626,” being painted in one comer. (See Frontispiece.) As Roland Savery was born in
1576, he was 23 years old when Van Neck’s expedition returned to Holland; and as we are
told by De Bry that the Dutch brought home a Dodo on that occasion, it is possible enough
that Savery may have taken the portrait of this individual, and that the design thus made may
have been copied by himself and by his nephew John in their later pictures. Or if we feel
disposed||for the reasons given at p. 11, wpra) to doubt the correctness of De Bry’s statement,
we may yet suppose, with Professor Owen, that the menagerie of Prince Maurice supplied
the hvmg prototype for Savery’s pencil. This opinion is corroborated by the tradition recorded
by Edwards, that the picture in the British Museum was drawn in Holland from the living
bird. I t is far more probable than the conjecture of Dr. Hamel, (Bull. Ac. Petersb. vol.v.
p. 317) that Savery’s pictures were copied from the Dodo exhibiteddn London, as this individual
must in that case have lived in captivity at least 12 years, from 1626 to 1638.
4. The present sheet was just rescued from the printer in time to announce an important
addition to our Pictorial Evidence. Dr. J. J. de Tschudi, the eminent Peruvian traveller,
hearing that this work was in preparation, has had the kindness to transmit to me an exact
copy of a figure of the Dodo by Roland Savery, which forms part of a picture in the impevi.l
collection ofthe Bellvedere at Vienna, and which is here introduced. (Plate III.) Dr. Tschudi
states that this picture is dated 1628; two years later than the Berlin one. There are two
circumstances which give an especial interest to this painting. First, the novelty of attitude
in the Dodo, exhibiting an activity of character which corroborates the supposition that the
artist had a living model before him, and contrasting strongly with the aspect of passive
stolidity in the other pictures. And, secondly, the Dodo is represented as watching, apparently
with hungry looks, the merry wrigglings of an eel in the water! Are we hence to
infer that the Dodo fed upon eels? The advocates ofthe Raptorial affinities of the Dodo,