Chapter 17

See Duvergier de Hauranne,Histoire du gouvernement parlementaire en France(Paris, 1857-1871), vol. iii.

DOCUMENT, strictly, in law, that which can serve as evidence or proof, and is written or printed, or has an inscription or any significance that can be “read”; thus a picture, authenticated photograph, seal or the like would furnish “documentary evidence.” More generally the word is used for written or printed papers that provide information or evidence on a subject. The Latindocumentum, from which the word is derived, meant, in classical times, a lesson, example or proof (docere, to teach), and only in medieval Latin came to be applied to aninstrumentum, or record in writing. The classical Latin use is found in English; thus Jeremy Taylor (Works, ed. 1835, i. 815) speaks of punishment being a “single and sudden document if instantly inflicted” (seeDiplomatic; andEvidence).

DODD, WILLIAM(1729-1777), English divine, was born at Bourne in Lincolnshire in May 1729. He was admitted a sizar of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1745, and took the degree of B.A. in 1750, being fifteenth wrangler. On leaving the university he married a young woman of a more than questionable reputation, whose extravagant habits helped to ruin him. In 1751 he was ordained deacon, and in 1753 priest, and he soon became a popular and celebrated preacher. His first preferment was the lectureship of West-Ham and Bow. In 1754 he was also chosen lecturer of St Olave’s, Hart Street; and in 1757 he took the degree of M.A. at Cambridge, subsequently becoming LL.D. He was a strenuous supporter of the Magdalen hospital, founded in 1758, and soon afterwards became preacher at the chapel of that charity. In 1763 he obtained a prebend at Brecon, and in the same year he was appointed one of the king’s chaplains,—soon after which the education of Philip Stanhope, afterwards earl of Chesterfield, was committed to his care. In 1768 he had a fashionable congregation and was held in high esteem, but indiscreet ambition led to his ruin. On the living of St George’s, Hanover Square, becoming vacant in 1774, Mrs Dodd wrote an anonymous letter to the wife of the lord chancellor, offering three thousand guineas if, by her assistance, Dodd were promoted to the benefice. This letter having been traced, a complaint was immediately made to the king, and Dodd was dismissed from his office as chaplain. After residing for some time at Geneva and Paris, he returned to England in 1776. He still continued to exercise his clerical functions, but his extravagant habits soon involved him in difficulties. To meet his creditors he forged a bond on his former pupil Lord Chesterfield for £4200, and actually received the money. He was detected, committed to prison, tried at the Old Bailey, found guilty, and sentenced todeath; and, in spite of numerous applications for mercy, he was executed at Tyburn on the 27th of June 1777. Samuel Johnson was very zealous in pleading for a pardon, and a petition from the city of London received 23,000 signatures. Dr Dodd was a voluminous writer and possessed considerable abilities, with but little judgment and much vanity. He wrote one or two comedies, and hisBeauties of Shakespeare, published in 1752, was long a well-known work; while hisThoughts in Prison, a poem in blank verse, written between his conviction and execution, naturally attracted much attention. He published a large number of sermons and other theological works, including aCommentary on the Bible(1765-1770). A list of his fifty-five writings and an account of the writer is included in theThoughts in Prison.

See also P. Fitzgerald,A Famous Forgery(1865).

DODDER(Frisiandodd, a bunch; Dutchdot, ravelled thread), the popular name of the annual, leafless, twining, parasitic plants forming the genusCuscuta, formerly regarded as representing a distinct natural order Cuscutaceae, but now generally ranked as a tribe of the natural order Convolvulaceae. The genus contains nearly 100 species and is widely distributed in the temperate and warmer parts of the earth. The slender thread-like stem is white, yellow, or red in colour, bears no leaves, and attaches itself by suckers to the stem or leaves of some other plant round which it twines and from which it derives its nourishment. It bears clusters of small flowers with a four- or five-toothed calyx, a cup-shaped corolla with four or five stamens inserted on its tube, and sometimes a ring of scales below the stamens; the two-celled ovary becomes when ripe a capsule splitting by a ring just above the base. The seeds are angular and contain a thread-like spirally coiled embryo which bears no cotyledons. On coming in contact with the living stem of some other plant the seedling dodder throws out a sucker, by which it attaches itself and begins to absorb the sap of its foster-parent; it then soon ceases to have any connexion with the ground. As it grows, it throws out fresh suckers, establishing itself firmly on the host-plant (fig. 2). After making a few turns round one stem the dodder finds its way to another, and thus it continues twining and branching till it resembles “fine, closely-tangled, wet catgut.” The injury done to flax, clover, hop and bean crops by species of dodder is often very great.C. europaea, the greater dodder (fig. 1) is found parasitic on nettles, thistles, vetches and the hop;C. Epilinum, on flax;C. Epithymum, on furze, ling and thyme.C. Trifolii, the Clover Dodder, is perhaps a subspecies of the last mentioned.

1. Flower removed from 2, Calyx.

3. Ovary cut across.

4. Fruit enveloped by a persistent corolla.

5. Seed.

6. Embryo. 1-6 enlarged.

c, stem of host.

d, stem ofCuscuta.

h, haustoria.

(After Dodel-Port.)

DODDRIDGE, PHILIP(1702-1751), English Nonconformist divine, was born in London on the 26th of June 1702. His father, Daniel Doddridge, was a London merchant, and his mother the orphan daughter of the Rev. John Bauman, a Lutheran clergyman who had fled from Prague to escape religious persecution, and had held for some time the mastership of the grammar school at Kingston-upon-Thames. Before he could read, his mother taught him the history of the Old and New Testament by the assistance of some blue Dutch chimney-tiles. He afterwards went to a private school in London, and in 1712 to the grammar school at Kingston-upon-Thames. About 1715 he was removed to a private school at St Albans, where he was much influenced by the Presbyterian minister, Samuel Clarke. He declined offers which would have led him into the Anglican ministry or the bar, and in 1719 entered the very liberal academy for dissenters at Kibworth in Leicestershire, taught at that time by the Rev. John Jennings, whom Doddridge succeeded in the ministry at that place in 1723, declining overtures from Coventry, Pershore and London (Haberdashers’ Hall). In 1729, at a general meeting of Nonconformist ministers, he was chosen to conduct the academy established in that year at Market Harborough. In the same year he received an invitation from the independent congregation at Northampton, which he accepted. Here he continued his multifarious labours; but the church seems to have decreased, and his many engagements and bulky correspondence interfered seriously with his pulpit work, and with the discipline of his academy, where he had some 200 students to whom he lectured on philosophy and theology in the mathematical or Spinozistic style. In 1751 his health, which had never been good, broke down, and he sailed for Lisbon on the 30th of September of that year; but the change was unavailing, and he died there on the 26th of October. His popularity as a preacher is said to have been chiefly due to his “high susceptibility, joined with physical advantages and perfect sincerity.” His sermons were mostly practical in character, and his great aim was to cultivate in his hearers a spiritual and devotional frame of mind. He laboured for the attainment of a united Nonconformist body, which should retain the cultured element without alienating the uneducated. His principal works are,The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul(1745), which best illustrates his religious genius, and has been widely translated;The Family Expositor(6 vols., 1739-1756),Life of Colonel Gardiner(1747); and aCourse of Lectures on Pneumatology, Ethics and Divinity(1763). He also published several courses of sermons on particular topics, and is the author of many well-known and justly admired hymns,e.g.“O God of Bethel, by whose hand.” In 1736 both the universities at Aberdeen gave him the degree of D.D.

SeeMemoirs, by Rev. Job Orton (1766);Letters to and from Dr Doddridge, by Rev. Thomas Stedman (1790); andCorrespondence and Diary, in 5 vols., by his grandson, John Doddridge Humphreys (1829). The best life is Stanford’sPhilip Doddridge(1880). Doddridge’s academy is now represented by New College, Hampstead, in the library of which there is a large collection of his manuscripts.

DODDS, ALFRED AMÉDÉE(1842- ), French general, was born at St Louis, Senegal, on the 6th of February 1842; his father’s family was of Anglo-French origin. He was educated at Carcassonne and at St Cyr, and in 1864 joined the marine infantry as a sub-lieutenant. He was promoted captain for his services during the disturbances in Réunion in 1868-69, in the course of which he was wounded. He served as a company commander in the Franco-German War, was taken prisoner at Sedan but escaped, and took part in the campaigns of the Loire and of the East. In 1872 he was sent to West Africa, and, except when on active service in Cochin China (1878) and Tong-King (1883), he remained on duty in Senegal for the next twenty years, taking a prominent part in the operations which brought the countries of the Upper Senegal and Upper Niger under French rule. He led the expeditions against the Boal and Kayor (1889), the Serreres (1890) and the Futa (1891), and from 1888 to 1891 was colonel commanding the troops in Senegal. At the close of 1891 he returned to France to command the eighth marine infantry at Toulon. In April 1892 Dodds was selected to command the expeditionary force in Dahomey; he occupied Abomey, the hostile capital, in November, and in a second campaign (1894) he completed the subjugation of the country. He was then appointed inspector-general of the marine infantry, and after a tour of the French colonies was given the command of the XX. (Colonial) Army Corps, subsequently becoming inspector-general of colonial troops and a member of theConseil supérieur de guerre.

DODECAHEDRON(Gr.δώδεκα, twelve, andἕδρα, a face or base), in geometry, a solid enclosed by twelve plane faces. The “ordinary dodecahedron” is one of the Platonic solids (seePolyhedron). The Greeks discovered that if a line be divided in extreme and mean proportion, then the whole line and the greater segment are the lengths of the edge of a cube and dodecahedron inscriptible in the same sphere. The “small stellated dodecahedron,” the “great dodecahedron” and the “great stellated dodecahedron” are Kepler-Poinsot solids; and the “truncated” and “snub dodecahedra” are Archimedean solids (seePolyhedron). In crystallography, the regular or ordinary dodecahedron is an impossible form since the faces cut the axes in irrational ratios; the “pentagonal dodecahedron” of crystallographers has irregular pentagons for faces, while the geometrical solid, on the other hand, has regular ones. The “rhombic dodecahedron,” one of the geometrical semiregular solids, is an important crystal form. Many other dodecahedra exist as crystal forms, for which seeCrystallography.

DODECASTYLE(Gr.δώδεκα, twelve, andστῦλος, column), the architectural term given to a temple where the portico has twelve columns in front, as in the portico added to the temple of Demeter at Eleusis, designed by Philo, the architect of the arsenal at the Peiraeus.

DÖDERLEIN, JOHANN CHRISTOPH WILHELM LUDWIG(1791-1863), German philologist, was born at Jena on the 19th of December 1791. His father, Johann Christoph Döderlein, professor of theology at Jena, was celebrated for his varied learning, for his eloquence as a preacher, and for the important influence he exerted in guiding the transition movement from strict orthodoxy to a freer theology. Ludwig Döderlein, after receiving his preliminary education at Windsheim and Schulpforta (Pforta), studied at Munich, Heidelberg, Erlangen and Berlin. He devoted his chief attention to philology under the instruction of such men as F. Thiersch, G. F. Creuzer, J. H. Voss, F. A. Wolf, August Böckh and P. K. Buttmann. In 1815, soon after completing his studies at Berlin, he accepted the appointment of ordinary professor of philology in the academy of Bern. In 1819 he was transferred to Erlangen, where he became second professor of philology in the university and rector of the gymnasium. In 1827 he became first professor of philology and rhetoric and director of the philological seminary. He died on the 9th of November 1863. Döderlein’s most elaborate work as a philologist was marred by over-subtlety, and lacked method and clearness. He is best known by hisLateinische Synonymen und Etymologien(1826-1838), and hisHomerisches Glossarium(1850-1858). To the same class belong hisLateinische Wortbildung(1838),Handbuch der lateinischen Synonymik(1839), and theHandbuch der lateinischen Etymologie(1841), besides various works of a more elementary kind intended for the use of schools and gymnasia. Most of the works named have been translated into English. To critical philology Döderlein contributed valuable editions of Tacitus (Opera, 1847;Germania, with a German translation) and Horace (Epistolae, with a German translation, 1856-1858;Satirae, 1860). HisReden und Aufsätze(Erlangen, 1843-1847) andOffentliche Reden(1860) consist chiefly of academic addresses dealing with various subjects in paedagogy and philology.

DODGE, THEODORE AYRAULT(1842-1909), American soldier and military writer, was born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on the 28th of May 1842. He received a military education in Germany and subsequently studied at Heidelberg and London University, returning to the United States in 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War he at once enlisted in the federal army, and he soon rose to commissioned rank. He served in the Army of the Potomac until Gettysburg, where he lost a leg. Incapacitated for further active service, he continued to be employed in administrative posts to the end of the war, and for several years thereafter he served at army headquarters, becoming captain in 1866 and brevet lieutenant-colonel in 1867. He retired in 1870. His works includeThe Campaign of Chancellorsville(1881),A Bird’s Eye View of our Civil War(1882, later edition 1897), a complete, accurate and remarkably concise account of the whole war,Patroclus and Penelope, a Chat in the Saddle(1883),Great Captains(1886), a series of lectures,Riders of Many Lands(1893), and a series of large illustrated volumes entitledA History of the Art of War, being lives of “Great Captains,” includingAlexander(2 vols., 1888),Hannibal(2 vols., 1889),Caesar(2 vols., 1892),Gustavus Adolphus(2 vols., 1896) andNapoleon(4 vols., 1904-1907). He died in France, at Versailles, on the 26th of October 1909.

DODGSON, CHARLES LUTWIDGE[”Lewis Carroll”] (1832-1898), English mathematician and author, son of the Rev. Charles Dodgson, vicar of Daresbury, Cheshire, was born in that village on the 27th of January 1832. The literary life of “Lewis Carroll” became familiar to a wide circle of readers, but the private life of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was retired and practically uneventful. After four years’ schooling at Rugby, Dodgson matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in May 1850; and from 1852 till 1870 held a studentship there. He took a first class in the final mathematical school in 1854, and the following year was appointed mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, a post he continued to fill till 1881. In 1861 he was ordained deacon, but he never took priest’s orders, possibly because of a stammer which prevented reading aloud. His earliest publications, beginning withA Syllabus of Plane Algebraical Geometry(1860) andThe Formulae of Plane Trigonometry(1861), were exclusively mathematical; but late in the year 1865 he published, under the pseudonym of “Lewis Carroll,”Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a work that was the outcome of his keen sympathy with the imagination of children and their sense of fun. Its success was immediate, and the name of “Lewis Carroll” has ever since been a household word. A dramatic version of the “Alice” books by Mr Savile Clarke was produced at Christmas, 1886, and has since enjoyed many revivals. Mr Dodgson was always very fond of children, and it was an open secret that the original of “Alice” was a daughter of Dean Liddell.Alicewas followed (in the “Lewis Carroll” series) byPhantasmagoria, in 1869;Through the Looking-Glass, in 1871;The Hunting of the Snark(1876);Rhyme and Reason(1883);A Tangled Tale(1885); andSylvie and Bruno(in two parts, 1889 and 1893). He wrote skits on Oxford subjects from time to time.The Dynamics of a Particlewas written on the occasion of the contest between Gladstone and Mr Gathorne Hardy (afterwards earl of Cranbrook); andThe New Belfryin ridicule of the erection put up at Christ Church for the bells that were removed from the Cathedral tower. While “Lewis Carroll” was delighting children of all ages, C. L. Dodgson periodically published mathematical works—An Elementary Treatise on Determinants(1867);Euclid, Book V., proved Algebraically(1874);Euclid and his Modern Rivals(1879), the work on which his reputation as a mathematician largely rests; andCuriosa Mathematica(1888). Throughout this dual existence Mr Dodgson pertinaciously refused to acquiesce in being publicly identified with “Lewis Carroll.” Though the fact of his authorship of the “Alice” books was well known, he invariably stated, when occasion called for such a pronouncement, that “Mr Dodgson neither claimed nor acknowledged any connexion with the books not published under his name.” He died at Guildford, on the 14th of January 1898. His memory is appropriately kept green by a cot in the Children’s Hospital, Great Ormond Street, London, which was endowed perpetually by a public subscription.

See S. D. Collingwood,Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll(1898).

DODO(from the PortugueseDóudo, a simpleton), a large bird formerly inhabiting the island of Mauritius, but now extinct—theDidus ineptusof Linnaeus. When, in 1507, the Portuguese discovered the island which we now know as Mauritius they named itIlha do Cerné, from a notion that it must be the island of that name mentioned by Pliny; but most authors have insisted that it was known to the seamen of that nation asIlha do Cisne—perhaps but a corruption of Cerne, and brought about by their finding it stocked with large fowls, which, though not aquatic, they likened to swans, the most familiar to them of bulky birds. In 1598 the Dutch, under Van Neck, took possession of the island and renamed it Mauritius. A narrative of this voyage was published, in 1601, if not earlier, and has been often reprinted. Here we have birds spoken of as big as swans or bigger, with large heads, no wings, and a tail consisting of a few curly feathers. The Dutch called themWalgvögels(the word is variously spelled),i.e.nauseous birds, either because no cooking made them palatable, or because this island-paradise afforded an abundance of fare so much superior. De Bry gives two admirably quaint prints of the doings of the Hollanders, and in one of them theWalgvögelappears, being the earliest published representation of its unwieldy form, with a footnote stating that the voyagers brought an example alive to Holland. Among the company there was a draughtsman, and from a sketch of his, Clusius, a few years after, gave a figure of the bird, which he vaguely called “Gallinaceus Gallus peregrinus,” but described rather fully. Meanwhile two other Dutch fleets had visited Mauritius. One of them had rather an accomplished artist on board, and his drawings fortunately still exist (see articleBird). Of the other a journal kept by one of the skippers was subsequently published. This in the main corroborates what has been before said of the birds, but adds the curious fact that they were now called by someDodaarsenand by othersDronten.1

Henceforth Dutch narrators, though several times mentioning the bird, fail to supply any important fact in its history. Their navigators, however, were not idle, and found work for their naturalists and painters. Clusius says that in 1605 he saw at Pauw’s House in Leyden a dodo’s foot,2which he minutely describes. In a copy of Clusius’s work in the high school of Utrecht is pasted an original drawing by Van de Venne superscribed “Vera effigies huius avisWalghvögel(quae & a nautisDodaerspropter foedam posterioris partis crassitiem nuncupatur), qualis viua Amsterodamum perlata est ex insula Mauritii. Anno M.DC.XXVI.” Now a good many paintings of the dodo drawn from life by Roelandt Savery (1576-1639) exist; and the paintings by him at Berlin and Vienna—dated 1626 and 1628—as well as the picture by Goiemare, belonging to the duke of Northumberland, dated 1627, may be with greater plausibility than ever considered portraits of a captive bird. It is even probable that this was not the first example painted in Europe. In the private library of the emperor Francis I. of Austria was a series of pictures of various animals, supposed to be by the Dutch artist Hoefnagel, who was born about 1545. One of these represents a dodo, and, if there be no mistake in Von Frauenfeld’s ascription, it must almost certainly have been painted before 1626, while there is reason to think that the original may have been kept in thevivariumof the emperor Rudolf II., and that the portion of a dodo’s head, which was found in the museum at Prague about 1850, belonged to this example. The other pictures by Roelandt Savery, like those in the possession of the Zoological Society of London and others, are undated, but were probably all painted about the same time—1626-1628. The large picture in the British Museum, once belonging to Sir Hans Sloane, by an unknown artist, but supposed to be by Roelandt Savery, is also undated; while the still larger one at Oxford (considered to be by the younger Savery) bears a much later date, 1651. Undated also is a picture in Holland said to be by Pieter Holsteyn.

In 1628 we have the evidence of the first 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, whoseTravelsran 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 inDygarrois3(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.4Herbert 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 François 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 so as to leave no doubt of his meaning dodos; but perhaps the most important facts (if they be facts) that herelates are that they had a cry like a gosling (“il a un cry comme l’oison”), and that they laid a single white egg (“gros comme un pain d’un sol”) on a mass of grass in the forests. He calls them “oiseaux de Nazaret,” perhaps, as a marginal note informs us, from an island of that name which was then supposed to lie more to the northward, but is now known to have no existence.

In the catalogue of Tradescant’sCollection of Rarities, preserved at South Lambeth, published in 1656, we have entered among the “Whole Birds,” a “Dodar from the islandMauritius; it is not able to flie being so big.” This specimen may well have been the skin of the bird seen by Lestrange some eighteen years before, but anyhow we are able to trace the specimen through Willughby, Edward Llwyd and Thomas Hyde, till it passed in or before 1684 to the Ashmolean collection at Oxford. In 1755 it was ordered to be destroyed, but, in accordance with the original orders of Ashmole, its head and right foot were preserved, and still ornament the museum of that university. In the second edition of aCatalogue of many Natural Rarities, &c., “to be seen at the place formerly called the Music House, near the West End of St Paul’s Church,” collected by one HubertaliasForbes, and published in 1665, mention is made of a “legge of a Dodo, a great heavy bird that cannot fly; it is a Bird of the Mauricius Island.” This is supposed to have subsequently passed into the possession of the Royal Society. At all events such a specimen is included in Grew’s list of their treasures which was published in 1681. This was afterwards transferred to the British Museum. It is a left foot, without the integuments, but it differs sufficiently in size from the Oxford specimen to forbid its having been part of the same individual. In 1666 Olearius brought out theGottorffische Kunst Kammer, wherein he describes the head of aWalghvögelwhich some sixty years later was removed to the museum at Copenhagen, and is now preserved there, having been the means of first leading zoologists, under the guidance of Prof. J. Th. Reinhardt, to recognize the true affinities of the bird.

We have passed over all but the principal narratives of voyagers or other notices of the bird. A compendious bibliography, up to the year 1848, will be found in Strickland’s classical work,5and the list was continued by Von Frauenfeld6for twenty years later. The last evidence we have of the dodo’s existence is furnished by a journal kept by Benj. Harry, and now in the British Museum (MSS. Addit. 3668.II. D). This shows its survival till 1681, but the writer’s sole remark upon it is that its “fflesh is very hard.” The successive occupation of the island by different masters seems to have destroyed every tradition relating to the bird, and doubts began to arise whether such a creature had ever existed. Dr Henry Duncan, Scottish minister and journalist, in 1828, showed how ill-founded these doubts were, and some ten years later William John Broderip with much diligence collected all the available evidence into an admirable essay, which in its turn was succeeded by Strickland’s monograph just mentioned. But in the meanwhile little was done towards obtaining any material advance in our knowledge, Prof. Reinhardt’s determination of its affinity to the pigeons (Columbae) excepted; and it was hardly until George Clark’s discovery in 1865 of a large number of dodos’ remains in the mud of a pool (the Mare aux Songes) that zoologists generally were prepared to accept that affinity without question. The examination of bone after bone by Sir R. Owen (Trans. Zool. Soc.vi. p. 49) confirmed the judgment of the Danish naturalist.

In 1889 Th. Sauzier, acting for the government of Mauritius, sent a great number of bones from the same swamp to Sir Edward Newton.7From these the first correctly restored and properly mounted skeleton was prepared and sent to Paris, to be forwarded to the museum of Mauritius. Good specimens are in the British Museum, at Paris and at Cambridge, England.

The huge blackish bill of the dodo terminated in a large, horny hook; the cheeks were partly bare, the stout, short legs yellow. The plumage was dark ash-coloured, with whitish breast and tail, yellowish white wings (incapable of flight). The short tail formed a curly tuft.

The dodo is said to have inhabited forests and to have laid one large white egg on a mass of grass. Besides man, hogs and other imported animals seem to have exterminated it. But the dodo is not the only member of its family that has vanished. The little island which has successively borne the name of Mascaregnas, England’s Forest, Bourbon and Réunion, and lies to the southward of Mauritius, had also an allied bird, now dead and gone. Of this not a relic has been handled by any naturalist. The latest description of it, by Du Bois in 1674, is very meagre, while Bontekoe (1646) gave a figure, apparently intended to represent it. It was originally called the “solitaire,” but this name was also applied toPezophaps solitariusof Rodriguez by the Huguenot exile Leguat, who described and figured it about 1691.

The solitaire, Didus solitarius of Gmelin, referred by Strickland to a district genus Pezophaps, is supposed to have lingered in theisland of Rodriguez until about 1761. Leguat8has given a delightful description of its quaint habits. The male stood about 2 ft. 9 in. high; its colour was brownish grey, that of its mate more inclined to brown, with a whitish breast. The wings were rudimentary, the tail very small, almost hidden, and the thigh feathers were thick and curled “like shells.” A round mass of bone, “as big as a musket ball,” was developed on the wings of the males, and they used it as a weapon of offence while they whirled themselves about twenty or thirty times in four or five minutes, making a noise with their pinions like a rattle. The mien was fierce and the walk stately, the birds living singly or in pairs. The nest was a heap of palm leaves a foot high, and contained a single large egg which was incubated by both parents. The food consisted of seeds and leaves, and the birds aided digestion by swallowing large stones; these were used by the Dutch sailors to sharpen their knives with. One of these stones, nearly an inch and a half in length, of extremely hard volcanic rock, is in the Cambridge museum. The fighting knobs mentioned above, are very interesting, large exostoses on one of the wrist-bones of either wing; they were undoubtedly covered with a thick, callous skin. Thousands of bones of this curious flightless pigeon were collected through Sir E. Newton’s9exertions, and by H. H. Sclater on behalf of the Royal Society of London. The results are several almost complete skeletons of both sexes, composed however out of the enormous mass of the dissociated bones.

(A. N.; H. F. G.)

1The etymology of these names has been much discussed. That of the latter, which has generally been adopted by German and French authorities, seems to defy investigation, but the former has been shown by Prof. Schlegel (Versl. en Mededeel. K. Akad. Wetensch.ii. pp. 255 et seq.) to be the homely name of the dabchick or little grebe (Podiceps minor), of which the Dutchmen were reminded by the round stern and tail diminished to a tuft that characterized the dodo. The same learned authority suggests that dodo is a corruption ofDodaars, but, as will presently be seen, we herein think him mistaken.2What has become of the specimen (which may have been a relic of the bird brought home by Van Neck’s squadron) is not known. Broderip and Dr Gray have suggested its identity with that now in the British Museum, but on what grounds is not apparent.3i.e.Rodriguez; an error.4Hence we venture to dispute Prof. Schlegel’s supposed origin of “Dodo.” The Portuguese must have been the prior nomenclators, and if, as is most likely, some of their nation, or men acquainted with their language, were employed to pilot the Hollanders, we see at once how the first Dutch nameWalghvögelwould give way. The meaning ofDoudonot being plain to the Dutch, they would, as is the habit of sailors, convert it into something they did understand. ThenDodaerswould easily suggest itself.5The Dodo and its Kindred, by H. E. Strickland and A. G. Melville (London, 1848, 4to).6Neu aufgefundene Abbildung des Dronte, by Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld (Wien, 1868, fol.).7E. Newton and H. Gadow,Trans. Zool. Soc.xiii. (1893) pp. 281-302, pls.8Voyage et aventures de François Leguat, &c. (2 vols., London, 1708). An English translation, edited with many additional illustrations by Captain Oliver, has been published by the Hakluyt Society (2 vols., 1891).9E. Newton and J. W. Clark,Phil. Trans.clix. (1869), pp. 327-362; clxviii. (1879), pp. 448-451.

2What has become of the specimen (which may have been a relic of the bird brought home by Van Neck’s squadron) is not known. Broderip and Dr Gray have suggested its identity with that now in the British Museum, but on what grounds is not apparent.

3i.e.Rodriguez; an error.

4Hence we venture to dispute Prof. Schlegel’s supposed origin of “Dodo.” The Portuguese must have been the prior nomenclators, and if, as is most likely, some of their nation, or men acquainted with their language, were employed to pilot the Hollanders, we see at once how the first Dutch nameWalghvögelwould give way. The meaning ofDoudonot being plain to the Dutch, they would, as is the habit of sailors, convert it into something they did understand. ThenDodaerswould easily suggest itself.

5The Dodo and its Kindred, by H. E. Strickland and A. G. Melville (London, 1848, 4to).

6Neu aufgefundene Abbildung des Dronte, by Georg Ritter von Frauenfeld (Wien, 1868, fol.).

7E. Newton and H. Gadow,Trans. Zool. Soc.xiii. (1893) pp. 281-302, pls.

8Voyage et aventures de François Leguat, &c. (2 vols., London, 1708). An English translation, edited with many additional illustrations by Captain Oliver, has been published by the Hakluyt Society (2 vols., 1891).

9E. Newton and J. W. Clark,Phil. Trans.clix. (1869), pp. 327-362; clxviii. (1879), pp. 448-451.

DODONA, in Epirus, the seat of the most ancient and venerable of all Hellenic sanctuaries. Its ruins are at Dramisos, near Tsacharovista. In later times the Greeks of the south looked on the inhabitants of Epirus as barbarians; nevertheless for Dodona they always preserved a certain reverence, and the temple there was the object of frequent missions from them. This temple was dedicated to Zeus, and connected with the temple was an oracle which enjoyed more reputation in Greece than any other save that at Delphi, and which would seem to date from earlier times than the worship of Zeus; for the normal method of gathering the responses of the oracle was by listening to the rustling of an old oak tree, which was supposed to be the seat of the deity. We seem here to have a remnant of the very ancient and widely diffused tree-worship. Sometimes, however, auguries were taken in other manners, being drawn from the moaning of doves in the branches, the murmur of a fountain which rose close by, or the resounding of the wind in the brazen caldrons which formed a circle all round the temple. Croesus proposed to the oracle his well-known question; Lysander sought to obtain from it a sanction for his ambitious views; the Athenians frequently appealed to its authority during the Peloponnesian War. But the most frequent votaries were the neighbouring tribes of the Acarnanians and Aetolians, together with the Boeotians, who claimed a special connexion with the district.

Dodona is not unfrequently mentioned by ancient writers. It is spoken of in theIliadas the stormy abode of Selli who sleep on the ground and wash not their feet, and in theOdysseyan imaginary visit of Odysseus to the oracle is referred to. A Hesiodic fragment gives a complete description of the Dodonaea or Hellopia, which is called a district full of corn-fields, of herds and flocks and of shepherds, where is built on an extremity (ἐπ᾽ ἐσχατίῃ) Dodona, where Zeus dwells in the stem of an oak (φηγός). The priestesses were called doves (πέλειαι) and Herodotus tells a story which he learned at Egyptian Thebes, that the oracle of Dodona was founded by an Egyptian priestess who was carried away by the Phoenicians, but says that the local legend substitutes for this priestess a black dove, a substitution in which he tries to find a rational meaning. From inscriptions and later writers we learn that in historical times there was worshipped, together with Zeus, a consort named Dione (see furtherZeus;Oracle;Dione).

The ruins, consisting of a theatre, the walls of a town, and some other buildings, had been conjectured to be those of Dodona by Wordsworth in 1832, but the conjecture was changed into ascertained fact by the excavations of Constantin Carapanos. In 1875 he made some preliminary investigations; soon after, an extensive discovery of antiquities was made by peasants, digging without authority; and after this M. Carapanos made a systematic excavation of the whole site to a considerable depth. The topographical and architectural results are disappointing, and show either that the site always retained its primitive simplicity, or else that whatever buildings once existed have been very completely destroyed.

To the south of the hill, on which are the walls of the town, and to the east of the theatre, is a plateau about 200 yds. long and 50 yds. wide. Towards the eastern end of this terrace are the scanty remains of a building which can hardly be anything but the temple of Zeus; it appears to have consisted of pronaos, naos or cella, and opisthodomus, and some of the lower drums of the internal columns of the cella were still resting on their foundations. No trace of any external colonnade was found. The temple was about 130 ft. by 80 ft. It had been converted into a Christian church, and hardly anything of its architecture seems to have survived. In it and around it were found the most interesting products of excavation—statuettes and decorative bronzes, many of them bearing dedications to Zeus Naïus and Dione, and inscriptions, including many small tablets of lead which contained the questions put to the oracle. Farther to the west, on the same terrace, were two rectangular buildings, which M. Carapanos conjectures to have been connected with the oracle, but which show no distinguishing features.

Below the terrace was a precinct, surrounded by walls and flanked with porticoes and other buildings; it is over 100 yds. in length and breadth, and of irregular shape. One of the buildings on the south-western side contained a pedestal or altar, and is identified by M. Carapanos as a temple of Aphrodite, on the insufficient evidence of a single dedicated object; it does not seem to have any of the characteristics of a temple. In front of the porticoes are rows of pedestals, which once bore statues andother dedications. At the southern corner of the precinct is a kind of gate or propylaeum, flanked with two towers, between which are placed two coarse limestone drums. If these arein situand belong to the original gateway, it must have been of a very rough character; it does not seem probable that they carried, as M. Carapanos suggests, the statuette and bronze bowl by which divinations were carried on.

The chief interest of the excavation centres in the smaller antiquities discovered, which have now been transferred from M. Carapanos’s collection to the National Museum in Athens. Among the dedications, the most interesting historically are a set of weapons dedicated by King Pyrrhus from the spoils of the Romans, including characteristic specimens of the pilum. The leaden tablets of the oracle contain no certain example of a response, though there are many questions, varying from matters of public policy or private enterprise to inquiries after stolen goods.

The temple of Dodona was destroyed by the Aetolians in 219b.c., but the oracle survived to the times of Pausanias and even of the emperor Julian.

See C. Wordsworth,Greece(1839), p. 247; Constantin Carapanos,Dodone et ses ruines(Paris, 1878). For the oracle inscriptions, see E. S. Roberts inJournal of Hellenic Studies, vol. i. p. 228. (E. GR.)

DODS, MARCUS(1834-1909), Scottish divine and biblical scholar, was born at Belford, Northumberland, the youngest son of Rev. Marcus Dods, minister of the Scottish church of that town. He was trained at Edinburgh Academy and Edinburgh University, graduating in 1854. Having studied theology for five years he was licensed in 1858, and in 1864 became minister of Renfield Free Church, Glasgow, where he worked for twenty-five years. In 1889 he was appointed professor of New Testament Exegesis in the New College, Edinburgh, of which he became principal on the death of Dr Rainy in 1907. He died in Edinburgh on the 26th of April 1909. Throughout his life, both ministerial and professorial, he devoted much time to the publication of theological books. Several of his writings, especially a sermon on Inspiration delivered in 1878, incurred the charge of unorthodoxy, and shortly before his election to the Edinburgh professorship he was summoned before the General Assembly, but the charge was dropped by a large majority, and in 1891 he received the honorary degree of D.D. from Edinburgh University. He edited Lange’sLife of Christin English (Edinburgh, 1864, 6 vols.), Augustine’s works (1872-1876), and, with Dr Alexander Whyte, Clark’s “Handbooks for Bible Classes” series. In the Expositor’s Bible series he edited Genesis and 1 Corinthians, and he was also a contributor to the 9th edition of theEncyclopaedia Britannicaand Hastings’Dictionary of the Bible. Among other important works are:The Epistle to the Seven Churches(1865);Israel’s Iron Age(1874);Mohammed, Buddha and Christ(1877);Handbook on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi(1879);The Gospel according to St John(1897), in the Expositor’s Greek Testament;The Bible, its Origin and Nature(1904), the Bross Lectures, in which he gave an able sketch of the use of Old Testament criticism, and finally set forth his Theory of Inspiration. Apart from his great services to Biblical scholarship he takes high rank among those who have sought to bring the results of technical criticism within the reach of the ordinary reader.

DODSLEY, ROBERT(1703-1764), English bookseller and miscellaneous writer, was born in 1703 near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school. He is said to have been apprenticed to a stocking-weaver in Mansfield, from whom he ran away, taking service as a footman. In 1729 Dodsley published his first work,Servitude; a Poem ... written by a Footman, with a preface and postscript ascribed to Daniel Defoe; and a collection of short poems,A Muse in Livery, or the Footman’s Miscellany, was published by subscription in 1732, Dodsley’s patrons comprising many persons of high rank. This was followed by a satirical farce calledThe Toyshop(Covent Garden, 1735), in which the toyman indulges in moral observations on his wares, a hint which was probably taken from Thomas Randolph’sConceited Pedlar. The profits accruing from the sale of his works enabled Dodsley to establish himself with the help of his friends—Pope lent him £100—as a bookseller at the “Tully’s Head” in Pall Mall in 1735. His enterprise soon made him one of the foremost publishers of the day. One of his first publications was Dr Johnson’sLondon, for which he gave ten guineas in 1738. He published many of Johnson’s works, and he suggested and helped to finance theEnglish Dictionary. Pope also made over to Dodsley his interest in his letters. In 1738 the publication of Paul Whitehead’sManners, voted scandalous by the Lords, led to a short imprisonment. Dodsley published for Edward Young and Mark Akenside, and in 1751 brought out Thomas Gray’sElegy. He also founded several literary periodicals:The Museum(1746-1767, 3 vols.);The Preceptor containing a general course of education(1748, 2 vols.), with an introduction by Dr Johnson;The World(1753-1756, 4 vols.); andThe Annual Register, founded in 1758 with Edmund Burke as editor. To these various works, Horace Walpole, Akenside, Soame Jenyns, Lord Lyttelton, Lord Chesterfield, Burke and others were contributors. Dodsley is, however, best known as the editor of two collections:Select Collection of Old Plays(12 vols., 1744; 2nd edition with notes by Isaac Reed, 12 vols., 1780; 4th edition, by W. C. Hazlitt, 1874-1876, 15 vols.); andA collection of Poems by Several Hands(1748, 3 vols.), which passed through many editions. In 1737 hisKing and the Miller of Mansfield, a “dramatic tale” of King Henry II., was produced at Drury Lane, and received with much applause; the sequel,Sir John Cockle at Court, a farce, appeared in 1738. In 1745 he published a collection of his dramatic works, and some poems which had been issued separately, in one volume under the modest title ofTrifles. This was followed byThe Triumph of Peace, a Masque occasioned by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle(1749); a fragment, entitledAgriculture, of a long tedious poem in blank verse onPublic Virtue(1753);The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green(acted at Drury Lane 1739, printed 1741); and an ode,Melpomene(1757). His tragedy ofCleone(1758) had a long run at Covent Garden, 2000 copies being sold on the day of publication, and it passed through four editions within the year. Lord Chesterfield is, however, almost certainly the author of the series of mock chronicles of whichThe Chronicle of the Kings of Englandby “Nathan ben Saddi” (1740) is the first, although they were included in theTriflesand “ben Saddi” was received as Dodsley’s pseudonym.The Economy of Human Life(1750), a collection of moral precepts frequently reprinted, is also by Lord Chesterfield. In 1759 Dodsley retired, leaving the conduct of the business to his brother James (1724-1797), with whom he had been many years in partnership. He published two more works,The Select Fables of Aesop translated by R. D.(1764) and theWorks of William Shenstone(3 vols., 1764-1769). He died at Durham while on a visit to his friend the Rev. Joseph Spence, on the 23rd of September 1764.

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