American Scientist the Magazine of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society

A reprint from American Scientist the magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society This reprint is provided for personal and noncommercial use. For any other use, please send a request to Permissions, American Scientist, P.O. Box 13975, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709, U.S.A., or by electronic mail to [email protected]. ©Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society and other rightsholders n Sc Marginalia a ie ic n r e t i m s classic t A • G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Yale University • C 1954 l e n i a t e n n The progress of Man in civilization, no less than his numerical increase, continually extends the geographical domain of Art by trenching on the territories of Nature, and hence the Zoologist or Botanist of future ages will have a much narrower field for his researches than that which we enjoy at present. It is, therefore, the duty of the natu- ralist to preserve to the stores of Science the knowledge of these extinct or expiring organisms, when he is unable to preserve their lives; so that our acquaintance with the marvels of Animal and Vegetable existence may suffer no detriment by the losses which the organic creation seems destined to sustain. hus wrote Strickland in the there is a suspicion that before its de- Tintroduction to his classical mise it adopted some of the manners memoir [1] on the dodo, published in of the court of Louis XIV. The birds 1848. It is both extraordinary and tragic from Reunion, without bones to rep- how little we still know about animals resent them, are solely known from the which have become far rarer than they reports of a few travelers and from a were at the time Strickland wrote. No number of problematic pictures and satisfactory treatment of L’éléphant et ses may, in part, be fabulous. amours, let alone a stately ten-volume The existing information about these Grundriss der Elefantenlehre appear, in strange creatures has recently been spite of the popular story, yet to exist. summarized by the late Viscount Ha- Of the rhinoceroses, of which perhaps chisuka, who died a few days before his not more than a few thousand speci- work appeared [2]. His book provides mens of the commonest species are an admirable excuse for an excursion now living, we know even less. The lit- into one of the oddest regions of natural tle that we do know is, however, abun- history. dantly worth knowing. Of the dodo we The three islands which were the cannot now learn much that is new; homes of the birds under consideration what is ascertainable will be discussed lie west of southern Madagascar, as in the following pages. shown in Figure 1. They were prob- ably known to the Arabs but were first The Dodo and the Solitaire sighted by European navigators early No animals that have ever lived seem in the sixteenth century. All were well to have balanced more precariously on forested, lacked land mammals other the boundaries of the real and the imag- than bats, and supported a number of inary than the flightless birds which birds, mostly now extinct, as well as are placed scientifically in the family giant tortoises. Of the last named, three Raphidae. Now, unfortunately, no one species are supposed to have lived on Editors’ Note: The renowned ecologist G. Evelyn can observe their behavior. They lived Rodriguez and a considerable number, Hutchinson was the first scholar to pen “Margi- on the islands of the Mascarene group, perhaps not all contemporary, have nalia” in American Scientist, beginning in 1942. Reunion, Mauritius, and Rodriguez. been described from subfossil or fossil This entry is from his last year as Marginalist, The dodo of Mauritius, as everybody material from Mauritius. Hogs, goats, 1954. The controversy he describes has only been knows, has also been an inhabitant of and chickens were liberated on Mau- resolved within the past decade, and we are not about to spoil the punch line here. If, however, you Wonderland since 1865, the very year ritius in the sixteenth century, but the visit the American Scientist website—after read- in which the best skeletal remains of island remained uninhabited until 1638 ing the Yale professor’s analysis, please—you can the bird were discovered and sent to when the Dutch established a settle- find a selection of links to material about the inevi- Europe. The solitaire never successful- ment. Reunion was apparently visited table reach of genetic analysis to solve the dilemma. ly left its home in Rodriguez, though for timber early in the seventeenth cen- 158 American Scientist, Volume 100 © 2012 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction with permission only. Contact [email protected]. a curiously gaunt and perhaps feather- less bird. Oudemans supposes that this appearance was assumed seasonally, presumably after breeding. Hachisuka thinks that part of the sheath of the beak was also shed at the moult. The contemporary accounts indicate that the bird lived in forests, fed on fallen fruits of some sort, and laid one white egg about 10 cm long in a nest on the ground. The raphid bird of Rodriguez, known generally today as the Solitaire, or scientifically Pezophaps solitaria (Gmelin), is in some ways the best known of the group, because it was the only species that came under the eye of anyone who was really interested in observing it. Un- fortunately, this gentleman, M. François Leguat, who went to Rodriguez in 1691 at the head of the Huguenot settlers, was by his own admission an inexpert draughtsman and so only published one detailed delineation of the bird from life. This is the whole of the icono- graphic evidence for its appearance, but the general form and some details of his figure have been confirmed by a great quantity of skeletal material recovered during the last century. There is, however, a special complication to be faced in considering the solitaire, not present in the case of the birds of the other islands. It has been seriously proposed that, unlike his bird, Leguat himself is a mythical creation. In the Voyage et avantures de François Leguat & de ses Compagnons en deux isles désertes des Indes Orientales [3] the solitaire is described as taller than a tur- key with similar feet and beak, though the latter was a little more hooked. The male is described as grayish and brown, Fig. 1. Redrawn from contemporary sources by Martha M. Dimock [6]. Reproduced by the female as either blonde or brown; Strickland and Hachisuka. one may perhaps suspect an age dif- ference here. The wings were too small for flight; in the account of the male it is said that there was a bony mass tury and was inhabited sporadically skillful and detailed oil paintings and under the feathers as big as a musket after 1649. Rodriguez was supposedly provide a great deal of information as to ball, used in defense. The female had first colonized in 1691 by a small group the appearance of the bird. About a doz- “une espèce de bandeau comme un of Huguenots who attempted to estab- en complete skeletons and many iso- bandeau de veuves en haut du bec qui lish a settlement. lated bones have been recovered from est de couleur tanée.” It is thus clear Though no skin of the Dodo still Mauritius in the past hundred years. from the original, though not from con- exists—Oxford University having de- Most of the illustrations indicate an ex- temporary translations, that the beak stroyed the only specimen as too moth tremely clumsy, fat, usually dark gray or was tan-colored. The band-like struc- eaten in 1755—the Mauritius species, blackish bird with a huge beak, minute ture is clearly dark and conspicuous Raphus cucullatus Linnaeus, is very well functionless wings, and short plumelike in Leguat’s figure. The most striking known. About twenty-five illustrations tail. It has been supposed that the fatter feature of the female, however, was that made during the seventeenth century specimens with less conspicuous tails, at the base of the neck there were two are in existence; these seem mostly to darker plumage, and brown rather than elevations, with whiter feathers than have been executed from captive birds golden irides are females, though no the rest, “qui représente merveilleuse- brought to Europe. Some of these pic- contemporary observer noted any sex- ment un beau sein de femme.” These tures, notably by Roelandt Savory, are ual dimorphism. Some drawings show structures, which must have put Leguat www.americanscientist.org © 2012 Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society. Reproduction 2012 March–April 159 with permission only. Contact [email protected]. in mind of some of the ladies he had lawyers, or priests. This observation whole of Leguat’s work, claiming that seen dressed in the fashions of late sev- of the marriage is apparently unique it was a novel written by F. M. Mis- enteenth century France, evidently con- in avian ethology; Leguat’s credibility son. In Atkinson’s attack on Leguat, tributed to his idea that “La femelle est is therefore a matter of considerable the unhappy solitaire was dealt many d’une beauté admirable,” though the interest. undeserved blows. blonde plumage was doubtless most at- Leguat’s book has had a most curi- Atkinson claimed that “Leguat,” that tractive. Of such birds walking to meet ous history. Written in French, it was is, Misson, had invented the solitaire, him with so proud a display he writes first published in England in 1708. A using as his sources the two brief de- “on ne peut s’empêcher de les admirer number of editions in French, English, scriptions by Carré and DuBois of a & de les aimer, de sorte que souvent bird of the same name in Reunion, a de- leur bonne mine leur a sauvé la vie.” scription of the “oiseau de Nazareth,” This statement from the first settler on apparently a dodo, seen on Mauritius an uninhabited island, in the presence The single egg and the by Cauche, other notes on Mascarene of an edible bird—”le goût en est excel- birds given by Cauche and DuQuesne, lent sur tout quand ils sont jeunes”—is long period required and finally, for the peculiar skeletal fea- a tribute to the elegance of the bird and tures of the wing, some experience with the sensitivity of the observer.

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