"Howard Waldrop - The Ugly Chickens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Waldrop Howard)

works are not without charm.

Another Dutch artist (they seemed to sprout up like mushrooms after a
spring rain) named Peter Withoos also stuck dodos in his paintings,
sometimes in odd and exciting places-wandering around during their
owner's music lessons, or with Adam and Eve in some Edenic idyll.

The most accurate representation, we are assured, comes from half a
world away from the religious and political turmoil of the seafaring
Europeans. There is an Indian miniature painting of the dodo which
now rests in a museum in Russia. The dodo could have been brought by
the Dutch or Portuguese in their travels to Goa and the coasts of the
Indian subcontinent. Or they could have been brought centuries before
by the Arabs who plied the Indian Ocean in their triangular-sailed craft,
and who may have discovered the Mascarenes before the Europeans
cranked themselves up for the First Crusade.



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At one time early in my bird-fascination days (after I stopped killing
them with BB guns but before I began to work for a scholarship), I
once sat down and figured out where all the dodos had been.

Two with van Neck in 1599, one to Holland, one to Austria. Another
was in Count Solm's park in 1600. An account speaks of "one in Italy,
one in Germany, several to England, eight or nine to Holland." William
Boentekoe van Hoorn knew of "one shipped to Europe in 1640, another
in 1685" which he said was "also painted by Dutch artists." Two were
mentioned as "being kept in Surrat House in India as pets," perhaps one
of which is the one in the painting. Being charitable, and considering
"several" to mean at least three, that means twenty dodos in all.

There had to be more, when boatloads had been gathered at the time.

What do we know of the Didine birds? A few ships' logs, some
accounts left by travelers and colonists. The English were fascinated by
them. Sir Hamon L'Estrange, a contemporary of Pepys, saw exhibited
"a Dodar from the Island of Mauritius ... it is not able to flie, being so
bigge." One was stuffed when it died, and was put in the Museum
Tradescantum in South Lambeth. It eventually found its way into the
Ashmolean Museum. It grew ratty and was burned, all but a leg and the