DODO, deck., or DRONTE (Didus in egtus), the name of a very remarkable extinct bird discovered by the Portuguese about 1507 on the island of Cerne or Mauritius and after ward seen there by the Dutch, both at the end of the 16th and in the beginning of the 17th century. Between 1610 and 1620 live specimens were brought to Europe for exhibition. The last authentic record shows its survival until 1681. As it was never seen after this it was deemed by some altogether fabulous; but its actual existence was completely established not only by drawings made by artists who accom panied the Dutch voyagers and preserved in Utrecht, Vienna and Berlin, but by fragments of the bird itself —among others, a foot in the British Museum, both a head and a foot in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and a skull at Copenhagen. Several other fragments and even entire embalmed birds reached certain of the continental museums, but seem to have been mostly lost or destroyed. In 1865 and again in 1889 large numbers of bones of the dodo were found in a marsh in Mauritius from which an almost complete skeleton has been set up in the British Museum and others distributed to va rious collections. The dodo had short and ill shaped legs and feet, scarcely able to support its clumsy and almost globular body, winch was about twice as large as that of a turkey; and a monstrous head which, apparently ill-attached to its body, contained an enormous mouth and terminated in a strong hooked beak Though covered with thick plumes it was destitute of wings sufficient for flight and had their place supplied by mere stumps or rudimentary append ages, covered with soft, ash-colored feathers intermixed with yellowish-white; the tail was composed of a few small curled feathers of the same description. Naturalists are now agreed that the dodo should be put in the order Colombce (q.v.) or pigeons, of which it with one
or two similarly extinct birds from neighboring islands, notably the Bourbon or Reunion dodo (Didus solitarius), is the representative of an extremely modified family type (Didida.). The cause of the extinction of the dodo together with several of its associates in the land fauna of Mauritius is said to have been the hogs which, let loose from the ships of the early ex plorers, multiplied greatly and overran the island. Consult Strickland and Melville, 'The Dodo and its Kindred' (London 1848), and Rothschild's 'Extinct Birds.) DODONA, (18-ana, a celebrated town in Epirus, 11 miles west of the modern town of Janina, on a spur of Mount Tomarus, in the neighborhood of which was one of the most ancient oracles in Greece. This oracle long maintained its celebrity. It belonged to the Pelasgic Zeus, who was supposed to dwell in the stem of an oak tree. The prophetic priestesses announced the divine communica tions in different ways. They approached the sacred tree and listened to the rustling of its leaves; or, standing by the fountain at the foot of the tree, observed the murmuring of the water which gushed forth from the earth, and in other ways. The sanctuary at Dodona was destroyed by Dorimachus, the 2EtoBan general, in 219 a.c. For over 1,300 years the site of the shrine was lost to history, but following on the conjectures of Bishop Wordsworth in 1832, excavations made by Constantin Carpanos in 1878 revealed the temples of Zeus and Aphro dite, the walls encircling the town and the theatre. Consult Diehl, 'Excavations in Greece> (London 1893) ; Gardner, 'New Chap ter in Greek History) (ib. 1892) ; and Words worth, C., 'Greece' (ib. 1839). See ZEUS.