Mare aux Songes gets ready this week to reveal some more of its secrets. The Dodo-Research Programme will be running all of June to collect samples from the site where fossil remains of the Dodo, and other extinct endemic animals and plants were found in October 2005. This research initiative aims at reconstructing the world of the Dodo, and to determine the factors which led up to its extinction.

While this important research is going on, it is interesting to look back to the very first time Dodo bones were found in Mauritius, in 1865, that is, just over 140 years ago.

At that time there was very little evidence to prove that the Dodo had ever existed. There were some eye-witness accounts by sailors who had visited Mauritius in the 1600s, a few paintings, and some bones in European museums. In the island itself, the Dodo had been wiped out of human memory.

By 1778, a Mr. Morel, who was Secretary of the Port-Louis Hospital, made an inquiry amongst the oldest inhabitants, and none of them had any knowledge of the existence of the Dodo. By 1816, at a banquet given by governor Robert Farquhar, nineteen guests, who were in their seventies, had never heard of it.

In the 1840s, George Clark was appointed as a teacher at the Diocesan School at Mahébourg in 1851. He was born in Wedmore, Somerset, England in 1807, and had married Mary Slocombe in 1832. He came to Mauritius, together with his wife, in 1838 with a group of missionaries working for the Mico Trustees.

During his spare time Clark had made numerous attempts at finding remains of the Dodo. Around 1860, Dr. Philip Ayres requested Clark to join him in a search for bones at the Fort Hendrick site, but they found nothing. Clark was puzzled by the fact that the Natural History Society had been unlucky in their constant search for bones. He believed that the best places look in were the alluvial deposits found in the mouth of rivers.

Since he was teaching in Mahébourg, he concentrated his efforts in the south-eastern part of the island. On his map, he noticed three rivers running into the sea, forming a marshy delta in an area close to where the airport is now located. He assumed that if any bones had been washed away by these rivers, they would be deposited in the mud of the delta.

During the 1860s, the first railway lines were being constructed in Mauritius, and George Clark extended his search area along railway excavations between Curepipe and Mahébourg. During his searches he would have met a young civil engineer by the name of Harry Higginson who arrived in Mauritius in 1862 to work on the railway project. Higginson was born in Thormanby in Yorkshire, England in 1838, and after working in Mauritius, he became Chief Railway Engineer in New Zealand.

It must have been an exciting moment when he recorded the following in his Journal:

?Shortly before the completion of the railway [19th October 1865] I was walking along the embankment one morning when I noticed some Coolies removing peat soil from a small morass (?) I stopped and examined them as they appeared to belong to birds and we had always been on the lookout for bones of the(?) Dodo. So I filled my pocket with the most promising ones for further examination.

A Mr Clarke, the Government schoolmaster of Mahébourg, had Professor Owen?s book on the Dodo so I took the bones to him for comparison (?) The result showed that many of the bones undoubtedly belonged to the Dodo.?

As Professor Owen?s book was not published until August 1866, Higginson and Clark would have compared their bones to pictures in Strickland and Melville?s book, ?The Dodo and its Kindred?, published in 1848. Higginson later recorded that he sent a full box of bones to the museums at York, Leeds and Liverpool, and to this day, the York Museum proudly displays the Journal and bones donated by their benefactor.

George Clark does not mention Harry Higginson in his Journal, but some credit must be given to the young railway engineer who alerted Clark to look in the marsh beside the new railway line. Clark records that his school pupils also told him of the discovery of bones at Plaisance, so he took leave from his work at the school to supervise the search for more material:

?[I] repaired to this spot, called ?La Mare aux Songes?, and mentioned to Mr. De Bissy, proprietor of the Plaisance Estate, of which this marsh forms part, my hope that, as the bones of one (bird) had been found there, (others) might also turn up. He was much pleased with the suggestion, and authorized me to take anything I might find there, and to give orders to his workmen to put aside for me any bones they found??

After many fruitless visits to the spot, Clark requested that some men feel around with their feet where the water was about three feet deep. A Dodo tibia was found. Encouraged by this discovery, they cut away a mass of floating weed covering the deepest part of the marsh and found most of the Dodo bones there.

As these bones showed no cutting or gnawing marks, and had not been burnt, it was concluded that the birds had lived in the neighbourhood and died a natural death. Clark commented on the reaction of some of the locals after his discovery:

?The astonishment of some very aged Creoles, whose fathers remembered Labourdonnais, at seeing a quantity of bones of large birds taken from this marsh, was really ludicrous. ?How,? said they, ?could these bones have got there? Neither our fathers nor our grandfathers ever knew of any such birds, or heard of such bones being found?.

More bones excavated

This is how George Clark described Mare aux Songes as it was in the 1860s:

?The Mare aux Songes comprises of an area of four or five acres. It is about a quarter of a mile from the sea (?). It is originally a ravine (?) A luxuriant growth of fern and sedge (?) forms a mass sufficiently compact to allow of a person?s walking across it. This covering (?) is probably a principle cause of the perfect state of preservation in which the bones under it were found (?)From its sheltered position (?) it must have afforded a suitable resort for birds of all kinds, and was probably a favourite abode of Dodos.?

The most common bones found by Clark were the metatarsals (feet), vertebrae (backbones), tibiae and fibulae (lower legs), pelvic bones (hips) and mandibles (lower beaks).

A request for Dodo remains had been made by the British Museum in 1856. A hundred bones were sent to Richard Owen, Superintendent of the museum. He published his ?Memoir on the Dodo? in 1866. After examining the bones, zoologists agreed with Richard Owen?s view that the Dodo had been a large, short-winged, fruit-eating pigeon.

Sadly, this great discovery did not feature as one of importance in Mauritius itself, as the population was facing a series of epidemics. Following an outbreak of cholera which killed over 12,000 people, the malaria epidemic from 1865 to 1868, saw the deaths of 75,000 people. A few Dodo bones was of no interest to a population that had just lost one fifth of its inhabitants in the space of three years.

In 1889, the Colonial Government of Mauritius promoted further research at Mare aux Songes, and Théodore Sauzier excavated more bones there between 1891 and 1892. Some of these were then sent to Cambridge where they were mounted into skeletons before being returned to the Natural History Museum in Port-Louis.

At a time when Mare aux Songes is being re-discovered, it is important to remember the discovery of the first Dodo bones by Harry Higginson and George Clark. Higginson went on to a successful career in New Zealand, where he died in 1900. In Wellington Cathedral there is a stained glass window which commemorates his life, and one of the panels depicts a Dodo. Clark remained in Mauritius until his death in Mahébourg on the 7th February 1873.

For the past two years, the author and Andrew Frost have been searching for the grave of George Clark in order that his life may be commemorated there. If any reader can help in this search, please make contact with l?express or the writer.

Alan GRIHAULT

BIBLIOGRAPHY

● CLARK, George.

1859, ?A Ramble Round Mauritius with some Excursions in the Interior of the Island - A Familiar description of its Fauna and some subjects of its Flora by a country school-master? in The Mauritius Register.

CLARK, George. 1865,

?On the discovery of bones of the Dodo in Mauritius? in Mauritius Commercial Gazette.?

CLARK, George. 1865,

?Account of the late discovery of Dodo remains in the Island of Mauritius? in Ibis, vol. ii, p 141-146.

● DUNCAN, John. 1828,

?A summary review of the authorities on which naturalists are justified in believing that the Dodo, Raphus cucullatus (Didus ineptus), was a bird existing in the Isle de France, or the neighbouring islands, until a recent period? in the Zoological Journal.

● GRIHAULT, Alan. 2005,

?DODO ? the bird behind the legend?, IPC, Mauritius.

GRIHAULT, Alan. 2005, ?A Study of Mare aux Songes in Mauritius: the site of the first discovery of Dodo bones in 1865?, Unpublished Paper.

● LEGUAT, François. 1705, Voyage et avantures de François Leguat et de ses compagnons en deux isles désertes des Indes Orientales, Amsterdam.

● OWEN, Richard. 1866,

Memoir on the Dodo; Introduction by William J. Broderip, Taylor and Francis, London.

● RYAN, Vincent W.,

Bishop of Mauritius. 1864, ?Journals of an Eight Years? Residence in the Diocese of Mauritius, and of a Visit to Madagascar?, Sheeley, Jackson and Halliday, London.

● STRICKLAND, H.E. and MELVILLE, A.G. 1848,

The Dodo and its Kindred, Reeve, Benham, and Reeve, London.