Miscellanenua. 437 



of great value, completing up to a certain point the indications given 

 by r^eguat, and nearly forty years aubseipiont to his narrative. 



It is II manuscript found in the Miiiistere de la Marino, entitled 

 " Relation de I'ile Rodriguo." It was discovered ])y M. Rouillard, 

 a magistrate of Mauritius, who was making some special investiga- 

 tions in these archives. I wjis informed of this fact by Mr. Alfred 

 Newton *, Professor at the University of Cambridge ; and he re- 

 (luested me to search in the archives of the ministry in order to 

 settle the time when this document was written ; for it bears no 

 date and no author's name, and is bound uj) together with other 

 manuscripts in vol. xii. of the ' Correspondance de Tile de France,' 

 annee I7<3o. Is this date the correct one? and may we conclude 

 that the birds in question were still living in 1 700 — that is to say, 

 scarcely more than a hundred years ago? 



T am con^^nced that this document is older than those with which 

 it has been combined ; and if I have not been able to discover its 

 author, I have been able to fix its period. In fact I found in vol. i. 

 of the ' Correspondance generale ' an old inventory of reports and 

 letters, from 1719 to 1732, contained in the portfolios of the office 

 before they were collected and bound in volumes. In this enumera- 

 tion is found our ' Relation de I'ile Rodrigue ' intercalated between 

 some documents of the date 1729 and others of 1730 and 1731. 

 Its inventory number corresponds exactly to that found on the 

 ' Relation ' itself; it is " No. 1, Carton 29." This indication there- 

 fore enables us to establish precisely, if not the time when the 

 report was written, at least when it was transmitted to the Coin- 

 pagnie des Indes. It is, then, anterior to 1730, and it was by mis- 

 take that it was bound up with the Correspondence of 1700. 



I should moreover remark that, according to the above-mentioned 

 inventor)-. Carton No. 29 must have also contained a " deliberation 

 of the Council" (of the Compagnie des Indes), " Jidy 20, 1725, as 

 to taking possession of the island of Diego Ruys " — that is, of Rod- 

 riguez. There is consequently reason to suppose that after the de- 

 liberation the Company commissioned one of its officers to go and 

 study the resources of the island, and find out if it was advisable to 

 make a settlement there. Our ' Relation,' transmitted four years 

 after, seems to answer completely questions of this sort. The un- 

 known author of the report first gives all the information necessary 

 to facilitate the landing, indicating all the islets and reefs ; he then 

 reviews the animal and vegetable productions, and has not forgotten 

 the survey of the soil and its arable qualities. 



This account permits us to affirm that forty years after Leguat's 

 departure the fauna of Rodriguez still included all the interesting 

 ornithic types described by him, and that their extinction was sub- 

 sequent to that date. It also gives us details of the habits, forms, 

 and colours of several species of which I had recognized the ex- 

 istence and zoological affinities from their bones alone ; and it con- 

 firms the results at which I had arrived. 



• Prof. A. Newton presented to the Zoological Society of London, at its 

 meetint? on the Iftth .Ianuar\ , 187"). ^lome extracts from the ' Relation." 



