THE DODO, EXTINCT SINCE the YEAR 1681, IS RESTORED in LIFE-SIZE MODEL RUDYERD BOULTON by of the Seventeenth Century

News Published Monthly by Field Miiseum of Natural History, Chicago Vol. 10 JANUARY, 1939 No. 1 THE DODO, EXTINCT SINCE THE YEAR 1681, IS RESTORED IN LIFE-SIZE MODEL RUDYERD BOULTON By of the seventeenth century. In order to one of the living specimens that was brought Curator of Birda judge the accuracy of this information, it to Europe during his life time. The com- Perhaps no bird is so universally known, is profitable to examine the life and career positions in his paintings are fanciful, as by name at least, as the dodo, symbol to of the artist, Roelant Savery, who painted may be judged from the titles of some of the modern world of obsolescence and the dodo several times. He was born in them: "Orpheus charming the beasts," grotesqueness. Few people, however, realize Courtrai (now in Belgium), in 1576, of an "Fable of the stags and cattle," "Slaughter that the dodo is anything but fictitious, and artistic family, his father and brother having of the Turks," "The Garden of Eden," fewer still know that there were two species also been painters. The two boys were and "Noah's Ark." of dodos, and also a dodo-like bird, the pupils of Hans Bol, genre painter, con- The figures of the birds and animals, solitaire, which flourished in a limited way temporary and colleague of Pieter Brueghel, however, are far from fanciful. They are in the seventeenth century. definitely literal, executed A restoration of the Mau- with the finesse and atten- ritius dodo has been com- tion to detail that is so char- pleted by the writer and acteristic of the Flemish recently was installed in Hall school. Among the birds 21. Mr. Frank Gino has ably that he painted are faithful modeled and constructed the figures of turkeys, pelicans, restoration, and Miss Laura swans, ostriches, casso- Brey has executed drawings waries, bitterns, herons, and paintings to supplement storks, crested cranes, pea- the exhibit. cocks, macaws, cockatoos There are no complete and geese. In the small re- specimens of dodos in exis- productions of Savery's tence. In addition to one or paintings available for ex- two incomplete skeletons amination the smaller birds and miscellaneous bones in are naturally unidentifiable, European museums, there is but they undoubtedly could a head in the Copenhagen be identified in the originals. Museum, a foot in the Brit- Several of his pencil draw- ish Museum, and a head and ings of monkeys would do a foot in the Ashmolean Mu- credit to our best modern seum at Oxford. The reason animal portrayors from the for the lack of specimens is point of view of literalness not hard to find since, during and accuracy, while Savery's the seventeenth century and figures of domestic animals even the first part of the are the equal of Bonheur's. eighteenth, there were no Roelant Savery, then, was museums as we know them an artist with an accurate, meticulous and today. No Myth, as Many Have Thought, the Dodo Looked Like This careful At least two dodos are Restoration, now on exhibition in Hall 21, of tiie extinct bird whose name has become a brush, and it is from his data [)art of our language as a of obsolescence. In many ways the most famous bird that ever known to have been symbol that the restoration of the brought lived, no complete specimen of the dodo, or even of its skeleton, remains in existence. alive to Europe, and one of dodo in Field Museum has them was shown in London in 1638. The the Elder, who was the most illustrious been made. To the Ryerson Library of the remnants of this bird, a head and a foot Flemish painter of the sixteenth century. Art Institute of Chicago, and especially to only, are undoubtedly those preserved at In the early part of Roelant Savery's career Mr. Daniel Catton Rich, Director of Fine Oxford, having first been exhibited in he traveled in the Tyrol and painted for Arts, and to Miss Dorothy Odenheimer, I Tradescant's Museum in 1656. The speci- some time at the courts of Rodolphe II am deeply indebted for assistance in examin- men has suffered grievously from the ravages and of Mathias, emperors of the German ing data relating to Savery's work. of time, a misfortune that will scarcely Empire, in Prague and Vienna. In 1619 he The dodos belonged to an extinct family happen to objects now preserved in present- returned to Holland and settled in Utrecht of birds related to the pigeons, constitut- day museums with their modern techniques. where, until his death in 1639, he painted ing with them the order Columbiformes. Our knowledge of dodos comes to us in landscapes with animals principally, and There were two genera—the dodos proper a most interesting way. Descriptions of became one of the outstanding animal and the solitaires. They were all large their habits and appearance are contained painters of the Flemish school. About 187 birds, about the size of turkeys, and they in the journals of navigators who sailed paintings and 90 drawings by Savery are were found only on three of the Mascarene the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century. extant, most of them in European collections. Islands, southeast of Madagascar. The The most accurate information, however, At least eight paintings attributed to gray dodo lived on Mauritius, the white comes through the school of Flemish paint- Savery contain figures of dodos, and it is dodo on Reunion (or Bourbon as it is some- ing that reached its peak in the early part highly probable that he had as a model times called), and the solitaire, which was 19S9 Page 2 FIELD MUSEUM NEWS January, of Palms direction of the wind, but the pits are not more slenderly built, inhabited Rodriguez. Economic Importance as deep nor are the rims as high as they All three were flightless, their wings being In tropical countries, palms furnish many have been had they fallen on muddy no longer functional. Their ancestors, of of the necessaries of life—food, clothing, might sediments instead of on sands. Mud, due course, were undoubtedly capable of flight. construction material for dwellings, home to its greater cohesiveness and because it The date of their extinction was about 1681. furnishings, etc. An extensive display of can be more easily squeezed, retains the This group of birds illustrates perfectly palms and their economic products is to be formed on it better than sand, the fact that insular isolation and freedom seen in Hall 25. impressions which tends to roll and spread. from predatory enemies bring about flight- M. Pullman Hall 13) is Another but somewhat per- lessness through mutation pressure and the George (Hall interesting devoted to horned and hoofed feature of the Field Museum speci- absence of the need for adaptation. Origi- entirely plexing animals from all of the world. men is that it does not contain as numerous nally there were no predatory mammals parts as be expected, indicating in this group of islands, but pigs and imprints might the wind either blew hard and that monkeys were introduced by the early FIELD MUSEUM NEWS that the rainfall was or that the impressions explorers. Within a hundred years the IN "NEW DRESS" light, the were caused by hail stones, which are pigs and monkeys completely destroyed better and to To provide legibility, than rain dodos and their kin. This illustrates the usually fewer numerically drops, increase and improve its service to of the introduction of and which, when accompanied by high danger promiscuous Members of the Museum, FIELD also descend at a slant and produce animals foreign to a natural environment. NEWS with winds, MUSEUM inaugurates similar and elevated rims. There is an interesting contemporary ac- elliptical pits this issue a more easily read style of from the No convincing proof that the impressions count of dodos published in 1601, and an in- typographical "dress," were made hail stones has been pen of the Dutch Admiral Neck, who by yet crease in size to eight pages. studied. wrested the island of Mauritius from the found, but the specimen is still being It is believed that all readers If conclusive evidence that the Portuguese. Another, that appeared in impressions will the increase two welcome by are hail is will be, to 1625, "There is a store of great fowle imprints found, they says: as terminolo- "points," printers' the of the writer, the first of of the bignesse of a Turkie, very fat, and knowledge of white gy expresses it, the space their kind ever to so short winged that they can not fly, brought light. between the lines of type. This rain and in a manner tame; and so Preservation or "fossilization" of drop being white, into brings the NEWS conformity or hail like those of mud cracks be all other fowles as having not been imprints, with the typographical practice of nor feared with shot." and foot prints of animals, is simple in its troubled and news- most modern periodicals nature if conditions are favorable. Rain Of the Rodriguez solitaire, F. Legaut wrote papers. on but not fluid in 1708: "They are taller than turkeys, drops falling soft, muddy The increase in the size of this or left after the reces- the eye black and lively and the head with- sandy flats, exposed monthly bulletin will make possible sion of leave their imprints. out comb on cop {sic). They never fly, their floodwaters, a more complete coverage of the for a time to sun and air desiccates wings are too little to support their bodies, Exposure activities of the Museum.

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