CHAPTER III. 
Brevipennate birds of the Isle of Bourbon. 
Ewidence of Castleton; of Bontekoe; of Carré; of Sieur D. B.; of Billiard; of a British Officer— 
Indications of a Brevipennate Bird in Madagascar—Review of the whole subject—Analogical case of 
New Zealand—Conclusion. 
Tue volcanic island of Bourbon, which lies about one hundred miles to the S.W. of Mauritius, 
is proved by indubitable evidence to have been inhabited by two species of birds, whose 
inability to fly, and their consequent rapid extinction, brings them into the same category 
with the Dodo of Mauritius and the Solitaire of Rodriguez. It will be remembered that 
Bourbon was discovered between 1502 and 1545 by Mascaregnas, a Portuguese, who 
called the island by his own name, but seems to have left us no other record of his visit. 
1. The earliest notice which concerns us is by Captain Castleton, who visited Bourbon 
in 1613. In the account of his voyage, written by J. Tatton, one of his officers, we read :— 
“There is store of Land-fowl, both small and great, plentie of Doves, great Parrats, and such 
like; and a great fowl of the bigness of a Turkie, very fat, and so short winged that they cannot tlie, 
beeing white, and in a manner tame; and so are all other fowles, as having not been troubled nor feared 
with shot. Our men did beate them down with sticks and stones. Ten men may take fowle enough 
to serve forty men a day.” (Purchas, ed. 1625. vol.i. p. 331. This narrative was also published 
separately in 1690, and is included in Prevost’s Histoire Générale des Voyages, vol. i. p. 120; in 
Harris’s Voyages, vol. i. p. 115; and in Grant’s Mauritius, p. 164.) 
2. In 1618, Bontekoe, a Dutch voyager, spent twenty-one days in Bourbon, which he 
describes as abounding with Geese, Parrots, Pigeons, and other game, and adds, “‘ there were 
also Dod-eersen, which have small wings, and so far from being able to fly, they were so fat 
that they could scarcely walk, and when they tried to run, they dragged their under side 
along the ground.” The original words, contained in the Journael ofte gendenckwaerdige 
Beschryvinge van de Oost-Indische Reyse van Willem Ysbrantz Bontekoe van Hoorn, 4to. 
Rotterdam, 1674, are as follows :-— 
“Daer waren oock eenige dod-eersen, die kleyne vleugels hadden, maer konden niet vliegen, waren 
soo vet datse qualijck gaen konden, want als sie liepen, sleepte haer de neers langhs de aerde.”—>p. 7.! 
1 Bontekoe’s Voyage was published in Dutch at Haerlem in 1646, at Rotterdam in 1647, at Utrecht in 1649 
and 1651, and at Amsterdam in 1648, 1650, and 1656. A French translation will be found in Thevenot’s 
Relations de divers Voyages Curieux, Paris, 1663, vol. 1., and a German one in Hulsius’s “ Vier und zwanzigste 
Schiffart,”’ &e. 4to. Franckfort, 1648. p. 7. 
