rst 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 (_Proc. Zool. Soc._ 1874,
pp. 447-449). 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." In the same fleet with Altham sailed Sir Thomas
Herbert, whose _Travels_ ran through several editions. 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. Herbert 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.[4] 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 showed 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 Francois
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 s