512 THE EOYAL MENAGEEIE OF FRANCE. 



and who died at the age of 75 years a martyr to science from dissecting 

 a dromedary that had died of a contagious disease. 



Duverney succeeded Perrault; he also was an anatomist of the first 

 rank, and the work of these two masters comprises documents of real 

 value to-day. 



The sudden death of the Dauphine, who, at the close of the reign of 

 the grand monarch, was almost the only one who took any interest in the 

 menagerie, caused a neglect of this fine establishment and its exotic 

 inhabitants. Forty years later, when Rouille, minister of marine, 

 oftered to Louis XV a living bird of a new species, the court showed 

 some desire to see again the establishment that had been abandoned. 

 The Due de Luynes, who then visited it (1750), found it worth making 

 more use of, in good order, and with many animals. 



It was no longer so when Louis XV, in his latter days, made a visit 

 to that quarter. A sort of superintendent who had charge of the 

 courts was then raising turkeys at the expense of the King. "Sir," 

 said the monarch, "if that tiock does not disappear 1 pledge my word 

 that I will break you at the head of your regiment! " 



Other not less crying abuses were introduced into the menagerie, 

 forgotten at the foot of the park at Versailles. If we may believe 

 Mercier,^ a dromedary, a sober dromedary, such as is found in the 

 deserts of Africa, cost the public every day six bottles of Burgundy 

 wine. And the common people of Paris, returning on the evening of 

 Whitsuntide by the boat from Sevres, after having seen the princes, 

 the procession of cooks, the park, and the menagerie, told the story of 

 a Swiss guard who had petitioned for the place left vacant by the death 

 of a dromedary. 



These tales of the turkeys, the dromedary, and the Swiss guard 

 certainly contributed in a large degree to excite the popular fury 

 against the menagerie, which was pillaged from toj) to bottom during 

 the days of October, 1789. 



Seven years earlier (July, 1782) Buffon had tried unsuccessfully to 

 transfer the last of its inhabitants to the Jardiu du Roi, in which there 

 were only a few aquatic birds. It required a number of unforeseen and 

 peculiar circumstances to effect, one fine morning in November, 1793, a 

 concentration in a corner of the Jardiu des Plantes of a group of 

 animals which formed the provisional menagerie of the new museum, a 

 menagerie soon after made i)ermanent. 



After the devastations of 1789 there remained at Versailles five 

 living animals that the pillagers had thought proper to leave alone — a 

 lion of Senegal and its companion a Dalmatian hound, an Indian 

 rhinoceros, a quagga from the Cape, and a bubalus sent by the Dey of 

 Algiers. There had also been saved from the disaster a very beautiful 

 crown pigeon from the Molluccas. 



Couturier, the registrar general of the domains of Versailles, Marly, 



1 Tableau de Paris, nouvelle 6d., Amstei dam, 1782, Vol. IV, page 146. 



