— 216 — 



same time that they would contribute to the enlarge- 

 ment of the Museum. Such a tash could easily be ful- 

 filled by niembevs of the Society whose names we need 

 not mention, and each would undertake the part suited 

 to his tastes and acquirements. 



As regards the Batany of the Island the greater part 

 of the cryptogams are imperfectly known ; the ferns, 

 the mosses, the lichens constitute as many subjects 

 worthy of study. On the other hand, the geological 

 formation of the colony, the shocks it has sustained and 

 of which traces are met at every step, the small islands 

 separated most likely by convulsion from the mainland, 

 the decrease if water in the rivers, the withdrawal of 

 the sea in certain places, and its encroachments in 

 others, the inumerable inhabitants which people the 

 deep, all these are so many elements to labor upon and 

 certainly enough to excite our admiration, at the same 

 time as our curiosity 



We will therefore not clase our Report without ex- 

 pressing the fervent hope that the 1st number of the 

 n«w series of our Transactions will soon be followed by 

 others which will contain the contributions of our col- 

 leagues who could do better than the Secretary has done. 

 We should therefore use every possible means of per- 

 suasion tOAvards them and repeat our entreaties over 

 and over again. 



A celebrated man has said : " Nature allows her se- 

 crets to escape more ready when she is tormented and 

 as it were tortured, than when she is left to follov,- her 

 ordinary course." 



Perhaps it is so with some of us ? We do not wish 

 to rake up the question of torture to induce them to 

 broak their silence. Neither must they be too much 

 tormented. It would, we feel assured, be sufficient to 

 point out to them, the additional degree of considera- 

 tion which Mauritius Avould obtain iu the eyes of the 

 world', if, independent of her innncnse reputation for 

 trade and agriculture which she enjoys in foreign coun- 

 tries, it was also known that she occupied herself in 

 the cultivation of the intellectual arts, noble rccn;atiou 

 from the labors of man, and of the sciences without 



