567
of Arabia,” eyes “like to Diamonds,” “covered with Doune, having little wings
hanging like short sleeves” and “a great fowle somewhat bigger than the largest
Turkey cock”
50
(Fig. 59.6).
59.3 The Walter Rothschild Factor
Lord Walter Rothschild’s bibliographic review of extinct birds, from 1580 to 1907,
encompasses well over 150 major sources. His extensive plates and sketches of the
Dodo in his Extinct Birds publication
51
reveal a gleeful heavy physiology—between
a Wandering Albatross and its precise, flightless opposite in a gentle, earthbound
being with a Falstaff-like mien that simply had not the least apparition of merciless
human predators. Hers was, before man, a life in paradise. Writes, Rothschild, “The
total inability of flight, the heavy slow gait, and the utter fearlessness from long
immunity from enemies, led to a continental slaughter.” Rothschild lists 14 paintings of the Dodo, from Vienna, Berlin, the Duke of Northumberland’s Sion House,
50 op. cit., Fuller, pp. 194–203.
51 London, 1907, pp. 172–174, Plates 24, 24a–c.
Fig. 59.7 “Landschaft mit Vogein,” 1628, by Roelant Savery, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wein,
GG1082. (Public Domain)
59.3 The Walter Rothschild Factor