RELATION DE L'lLE EODRIGUE. 



M. Alph. Milne-Edwards presented to the Section of Anatomy 

 and Zoology of the French Academy of Sciences, on the 10th May 

 1875, his Observations on the Epoch of the Disappearance of the 

 Ancient Fauna of the Island Rodriguez,^ in which he announced 

 the discovery by M. Rouillard, a magistrate of Alauritins, among 

 the archives of the Ministry of Marine at Paris, of a manuscript 

 entitled Relation de Vile Rodrigue, reported to him by Professor 

 A. Newton, of Cambridge, who requested him (M. Milne-Edwards) 

 to make further investigation to fix the epoch when this manu- 

 script was written ; for it bore no date or name of author, but had 

 been found bound up in tome xii of the Correspondence of the lie 

 de France, a.d. 1760. Was this date exact as regards the manu- 

 script, and was it to be concluded that from this MS. narrative 

 that the birds in question were still alive in 1760 — that is to say, 

 almost after a century from the time that Leguat wrote 1 



M. Milne-Edwards was able to convince himself that this 

 document was of older date than that of the correspondence with 

 which it was bound up ; and, although he was unable to discover 

 the name of the author, he was able to fix the date when it was 

 written. In fact, he found in tome i of the correspondence an old 

 inventory of the I'eports and letters from 1719 to 1732, enclosed 

 in the files of the office before they had been arranged and bound 

 in volumes. In this enumeration he found mentioned this 

 Relation de Vile Rodrigue interpolated between documents dated 

 from 1729 to 1730-31. Its index number corresponded exactly 

 with that now^ on the Relation itself. It is No. 1 of the file 

 (carton) 29. This indication, therefore, enabled him to establish 

 with some accuracy the period when, if it was not written, at all 

 events it was transmitted to the Compagnie des Indes. It is, 



1 Compfcs rciidns des seances de P Academic dcs SciriiccSj tome Ixxx, 

 1875, p. 1212. 



