"Sir,
"I wish I could confirm the truth of the information given to MR. WINN,
which I think it is scarcely necessary for me to say is _entirely
incorrect_: and how such a report could have originated it is difficult
to understand; unless by supposing that a member of the family when at
Nettlecombe, in their childhood, had seen a stuffed specimen of the
large _bustard_; and that this, in the course of years, had been
magnified in their imaginative and indistinct recollection into a
_dodo_. I admired much your restoration of the dodo at the Great
Exhibition; which, judging from the old pictures and known remains of
the bird, gives, I think, a very good idea of what it was. I do not
know of {545} any other remains of the _dodo_ than those enumerated by
Mr. Strickland; and had there been any at Nettlecombe, they would long
ago have been known to naturalists.
"I remain, Sir,
"Yours faithfully,
"W. C. TREVELYAN.
To Mr. A. D. Bartlett,
12. College Street, Camden Town."
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