THE ROYAL MENAGERIE OF FRANCE. 511 



establishment, and as early as 1664 had the Nuncio Ohigi and the Doge 

 of Grenoa visit the still-iinfiuished buildings.^ 



At that time the menagerie was reached by the left branch of the 

 Traverse du Canal, leading from the Trianon. At the end of a flue 

 avenue of trees there was an entrance to a first court, which led to a 

 second one of an octagonal form, in the midst of which there arose the 

 little chateau of the Dauphiue, with its grand salon, its subterranean 

 grotto, and two rich apartments. Around this radiated seven other 

 courts, closed with grills united with termini representing "some sub- 

 ject of metamorphosis." There was the court of the Ostrich; the court 

 of the Aviary, in which there was an aviary "of extraordinary beauty 

 and magnificence;"'^ the court of Pelicans, with its reservoir quite filled 

 with fish; then again the court of the Basin or of the Pond, the court 

 of the Well, etc.; and beyond these symmetrical courts yet other courts, 

 called those of the Stags, of the Lion, of the Fowls, cages for ferocious 

 animals, an enormous dovecot that contained 3,000 pigeons, and at last 

 a farmhouse, with its dependencies and various buildings that served 

 as servants' quarters. 



As early as 1671 the menagerie began to be filled with the most 

 curious and varied animals. There was a certain Mosnier, or Le Mos- 

 nier, of Montpellier, who was the principal purveyor, while the officers 

 of the royal navy, the consuls (jDarticularly the one at Cairo), governors 

 (like the one at Madagascar), sent in whatever they could find that was 

 curious. 



A single consignment, for example, that arrived in 1688 comprised 194 

 animals from the Levant — 13 ostriches and 137 of those sultana fowls 

 that we were trying vainly at that time to acclimate in France ; a pelican, 

 Egyptian geese, egrets, etc., and finally 6 goats from the Thebaide.^ 



The menagerie at Versailles then possessed several thousand animals 

 more or less rare ; an elephant, dromedaries, gazelles, a cassowary, and 

 later a number of wild beasts which had been brought from Vincennes, 

 then abandoned. 



Oudry and Desportes took the portraits of the most curious of these 

 foreign guests at Versailles, and the Louvre possesses an enormous col- 

 lection of studies painted from nature by order of the King. 



If an interesting animal died, Colson seized it for the museum, and 

 Claude Perrault made of it the most minute dissections; Perrault, 

 whom the scornful Boileau treated as a learned boaster, and who was 

 one of the most erudite physicians of his age and one of the founders 

 of comparative anatomy; Perrault, who, unappalled by the rigors of 

 one of the most severe winters that France had ever known, studied 

 the numerous victims that perished from cold in the cages at Versailles, 



'Dussieux, The Chateau de Versailles. Histoire et description. Versailles, 1881. 



2 Piganiol de la Force, Nouvelle description des chateaux et pares de Versailles et 

 de Marly, 1730, Vol. II, page 193, et seq. 



^ Comptes des batiments du roi, sous le regne de Louis XIV, published by M. J. 

 Guiffery, 



