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| The bone - plus a letter from Edith Clark to Thomas Parkin |
BIDS are being invited for a collection of dodo material - including a wing bone from the long-extinct species.
The bone is one of several found by a British school teacher, George Clark, at the edge of marshland in Mauritius either in 1865 or in 1866.
He dispatched most of the bones to auction houses in London and Paris whence they ended up in museums.
However, the few retained by Clark were eventually inherited by two of his daughters.
One of them, Edith, sold some to Thomas Parkin, a collector-dealer in Hastings, East Sussex.
Parkin then sold them on to a policeman-ornithologist, Hugh Whistler (1889-1943), author of A Popular Handbook of Indian Birds
Following Whistler's death, the bones were inherited by his son, Ralfe (1930-2023), who went on to amass a huge collection of dodo memorabilia.
Much of this collection is due to go under the hammer at an auction to be held over two days , September 24-25, at Billingshurst in West Sussex.
According to auctioneers, a bid of £8,000 has already been submitted for the scapular coracoid bone, but, because of the item's rarity, it is thought the hammer might not fall until the figure reaches £10,000.
Also in the sale are a copy of the book, The Dodo and Its Kindred (1848) by H.E. Strickland and A.G Melville which is expected to realise between £1,400 and £1,600 and a bronze for which the pre-sale estimate is between £300 and £500.
The dodo became extinct in 1681 partly because it was vulnerable to attack by predators introduced by settlers in Mauritius.
More information about the sale: Summers Place Auction – Leading Garden Statuary and Natural History Auctioneers (summersplaceauctions.com)
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| The Dodo and Its Kindred - the first book about the species |
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| Bronze sculpture of the extinct bird - a species famously immortalised in the book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland |
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