Was it because he had a stammer that Charles Lutwidge Do-Do-Do-Dodgson – aka Lewis Carroll – became fascinated by the Dodo? Or was it perhaps his penchant for alliteration and the idea of being ‘Dead as a Dodo’?
The last Dodo had expired well over a century before Dodgson’s birth in 1832. Its desiccated head and foot were acquired by John Tradescant, then gifted to Elias Ashmole and placed in the museum which bore his name – until the 1860s when they were moved to the University’s Natural History Museum on Parks Road.
And that’s where we can see the Dodo today. Or, rather, a recreated version of what it might have looked like in its prime. (Tradescant’s original is in the Museum’s storage vaults.)
From a scientific point of view the Oxford Dodo’s special interest is the fact that it provides the most complete remains of this extraordinary creature, and the only surviving soft tissue in the world from which to capture DNA for analysis. So we are able to explore the genetic code of a species which hasn’t walked on planet earth (another of the Dodo’s peculiarities is that it was a flightless bird) for over 300 years.
From a literary point of view the Dodo is emblematic of Carroll’s genius, of the power of imagination, and of the sheer delight to be derived from the sound of words. Thanks to him, the Dodo is, quite simply, the most famous dead animal in the English-speaking world.
Inspired by our foray to the museum we’ve put together an ABC of some of the other animals on show in Oxford. And we’ve come up with a brutish challenge at the end …
A is for Aardvark –
All self-respecting lexicons should begin with ‘Aardvark’, but alas none has so far been spotted in Oxford except in the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary. So instead we’ll plump for …
Ammonite
Ammonites are the fossilized remains of coiled-shelled molluscs who once swam in our sunlit tropical waters until their extinction at the time of the dinosaurs some 60 million years ago. Nicknamed ‘snakestones’, legend has it that Saint Hilda of Whitby (c.614-680) prayed for the plague of serpents infesting her Abbey to be turned to stone, and God duly obliged. When an Oxford hall (later college) was established in her name in 1893 it was only natural that it should adopt the ammonite as its symbol (and include a curled snake in its coat of arms). The motto reads:
NON FRUSTRA VIXI – I have not lived in vain.
Bee
A beehive hovers over the main door at Lloyds Bank, on the corner of Cornmarket and the High. For bees were the bank’s symbol until it acquired another finance house in 1884, and with it the more familiar Black Horse logo. Bees are a metaphor for busyness. We aren’t quite sure what black horses symbolize (beauty, wildness, galloping inflation?)
Cow
Need we say more? This is one of our favourite photographs, taken on Port Meadow by the incomparable Adrian Arbib.
There are other bovine contenders of course, including these handsome longhorns on Christ Church meadow.
And … have you herd? The Wolvercote Commoners recently acquired three Red Dexter cattle, which can be seen grazing on Wolvercote Green after the hay has been cut. The Commoners have even been mooved to form a cowoperative [Their puns not mine, I hasten to add. Ed.]
We could have chosen Ape as our A word and explored the ‘Apes v Angels’ debate which took place in Oxford in 1860, shortly after Darwin published his ground-breaking work on The Origin of Species.
We could have gone for Bear or Boar as our B word which would have enabled us to link to these two stories:
C could have stood for Cat, Crow, Crocodile or Cockerel. Did you know that New College once had a pet cat called Fish while St Catherine’s College had a pet dog called Cat?
OK, OK – we get the picture. Let’s fast-forward to Z. And yes, there is a Z. It’s the Zimbabwe Bird which perches (or, rather, looms) above Rhodes House.
Now here, as promised, is that beastly challenge.
Are you, dear Reader, able to name an Oxford animal for every letter of the alphabet?
We think we’ve identified most of them; but we’re still hunting for the following missing specimens:
Feedback
We are most grateful to Mark Carnall, Collections Manager, Life Collections (Human remains and non-insect invertebrates) at the OUMNH, for his expert input, and indeed restraint, when it came to correcting our zoological solecisms. He writes:
The precise date of the death of the last Dodo is uncertain. No one can say for sure that it was 1690 – the date which is often cited. But it does seem likely, as you suggest, that the species was extinct by the end of the seventeenth century. The Tradescant dodo is not, however, considered to be the last of the breed. The current ‘animal’ on display is a composite skeleton, comprising several sub-fossil bones and a 3-D printed skull. The original was not mummified, as some accounts claim, but instead dried. Moreover, it is not the only source of dodo DNA; sub-fossil material also provides DNA and may in fact be a better source.
We mustn’t get distracted by cats (easily done) except to point out that The Clarion has explored the subject in comprehensive and captivating detail:
