luse wrote, in 1605. About the same time
that De Bry published this _fourth_ part of _Indiae Orientalis_, the
Dutch work appeared containing the account of the voyages of the whole
eight ships; and then De Bry, in his _fifth_ part, which came out
later in the same year, was enabled to give a correct representation
of the dodo, and a complete account of the voyages of the whole
squadron. We have been more precise on this part of our subject than
might seem necessary; but by being so, we have smoothed over an
inequality that has been a stumbling-block to almost all previous
writers on the dodo.

L'Ecluse, professor of botany at Leyden, one of the greatest
naturalists of his age, published his _Exoticorum_ in 1605. In it he
gives an engraved likeness and description of the dodo, which he
obtained from persons who had sailed in De Warwijk's fleet, stating
that he had himself seen only the leg of the bird--a sure proof that
no live specimen had, at that time, been brought to Holland.

Passing over the visits to the isles of four old Dutch navigators, who
all describe the dodo under different names, we come to the quaint old
traveller, Sir Thomas Herbert, who touched at the Mauritius in 1627.
In his _Relation of some Yeare's Travaile_, he thus describes the
bird:--'The dodo; a bird the Dutch call walghvogel or dod eersen; her
body is round and fat, which occasions the slow pace, or that her
corpulencie; and so great as few of them weigh less than fifty pound:
better to the eye than stomack: greasy appetites may perhaps commend
them, but to the indifferently curious in nourishment, prove
offensive. Let's take her picture: her visage darts forth melancholy,
as if sensible of Nature's injurie in framing so great and massie a
body to be directed by such small and complementall wings, as are
unable to hoise her from the ground; serving only to prove her a bird,
which otherwise might be doubted of. Her head is variously drest, the
one-half hooded with downy blackish feathers; the other perfectly
naked, of a whitish hue, as if a transparent lawne had covered it. Her
bill is very howked, and bends downwards; the thrill or
breathing-place is in the midst of it, from which part to the end the
colour is a light green mixed with a pale yellowe; her eyes be round
and small, and bright as diamonds; her clothing is of finest downe,
such as you see on goslins. Her trayne is (like a China beard) of
three or four short feathers; her legs thi