SAD TALE OF THE DODO

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33965, 4 October 1975, Page 11

SAD TALE OF THE DODO

! (By K. IV. ANTHONY) “Dead as the dodo" lis a term in common , use to denote anything which has disappeared, never to return; and here is a ( dodo on a stamp — i one issued by Mauritius, the place where the dodo used to live. When the island in the Indian Ocean was discovered by the Portuguese it was uninhabited by humans, and dodos had the place to themselves. They were slightly larger than a turkey, slow on their feet, and had such small wings that they were unable to fly. These handicaps, combined with the fact that it was good eating, made the dodo a sitting target for the Dutch colonists when they arrived in 1644, naming the island of Count Maurice of Nassau. Within 50 years the dodo was extinct The Dutch abandoned Mauritius in 1712, and subsequently the island was occupied by the 'French. In the Napoleonic wars it was taken by the British, and it remained a

British colony until it be- | came independent in 1968.. But the principal lan' guage spoken there is still French. < The stamp illustrated,! the first to introduce the I dodo to the stamp album.i was issued in 1950. It contains a curious error i in the design, too. The, latitude of the island. on< the outline map in the I background, is given as| one degree too much — 21 degrees (instead of] 20), or 101 minutes. A similar design was] used for the 60c. stamp l of the 1954 issue, but the I error was corrected. i Mauritius has shown I on its stamps not only the dodo, a creature , which used to be there ( but has now disappeared, but also the Mauritius deer—which, in spite of its name is not “native” at all.