72 Biographical Notice ofM. Lislet-Geoffi-oy. 



author during numerous voyages in the midst of this dangerous 

 archipelago. 



Map of Madagascar. This was published by order of the 

 English Government after the Isle of France had ceased to form 

 one of our colonies. 



In the map of the Isle of France, which accompanies the 

 Voyage of M. Bory de Saint- Vincent to the four principal 

 islands of the African seas, the mountains are designed, as the 

 learned traveller himself declares, according to a plan of M. 

 Lislet-Geoffroy. 



Peron has published, in his Voyage of Discovery to the 

 Southern Lands, a table of the heaviness and relative strength of 

 many different kinds of wood belonging to the Isle of France, 

 which was communicated to him by M. Lislet-(ieoffroy. 



The oak of Europe appears in this table as a standard where- 

 with to compare the results which various natural philosophers 

 have obtained by operating on substances of the old continent. 

 It only occupies the seventeenth place with regard to weight, 

 and the nineteenth in respect of strength ! 



The almanacs of the Isle of France contained various scien- 

 tific articles by M. Lislet (one among others on the mountain 

 named Pitrebot), which shew all the varied knowledge of their 

 author. The experiments by means of which M. Lislet proved 

 that the shoal known under the name of Isle Plate, was formed 

 by the debris of the old crater of a volcano, have been justly 

 appreciated by geologists. 



The interesting account of a voyage to Saint-Luce (Isle of 

 Madagascar), made in 1787, is found in the second volume of 

 Malte-Brun's Annales des Voyages. 



I may affirm, in conclusion, that the most important labour 

 which M. Lislet ever undertook, and on which he never ceased 

 to bestow the most scrupulous care during his long life, and 

 which will enable us to fix definitively the climatic circumstances 

 of the Isle of France, will not be lost to science. I remember, 

 indeed, that M. de Freycinet, who, in 1818, carefully compared 

 the meteorological instruments of the Urania with those of M. 

 Lislet, obtained from that natural philosopher a series of tables 

 embracing an interval of more than thirty years, When these 



