420 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



" Martin " by the Creoles, a name also conferred on the Mynah 

 (Acridotheres tristis), which had been introduced into Eeunion 

 from India. 



The actual date at which the Fregilupus was exterminated 

 will probably never be known. It was apparently abundant as 

 late as the beginning of the last century, about which time 

 Levaillant expressed the hope that some day travellers would 

 give to the world the history of so common a bird. He had a 

 specimen in his own collection, and knew of seven others ; yet 

 no ornithologist of repute seems to have met with the bird till 

 M. Jules P. Verreaux, about 1833, obtained an example. In the 

 short space of thirty years the E6union Starling had become 

 almost extinct ; Verreaux used, indeed, to boast that he had 

 shot one of the last of them. The bird seems to have first 

 vanished from the coast and the mountainous districts near the 

 sea. Professor Schlegel, then Director of the Leyden Museum, 

 made, about 1868, special inquiries for the Crested Starling, a 

 bird of which for many years previously nothing had been heard. 

 He was assured that it yet lingered in the forests of the interior 

 near Saint Joseph, though he does not seem to have obtained a 

 single example. M. A. Legras, an able ornithologist actually 

 resident on the island, had scarcely seen a dozen specimens in 

 all his naturalist wanderings. A photo-engraving of the "Pointe 

 de Saint Joseph" is now before me. This last refuge of the 

 Fregilupus appears as a wild headland projecting into the sea, 

 into which it is continued for some distance as a chain of islets ; 

 it is well clothed with grass and bushes, being luxuriantly fertile 

 to the water's edge. One may perhaps fix 1860 as the approxi- 

 mate date at which the Eeunion Starling was exterminated. 

 Emile Trouette, in 1671, described Eeunion as a huge forest 

 peopled with birds of brilliant plumage, ignorant of the wicked- 

 ness of man, who was able to destroy them. Poor things ! if 

 they were at first ignorant, they soon learnt their lesson from 

 the sticks of the Creoles whose coffee-bushes they had rifled ! 



The actual cause of the extinction of the native Starling is 

 not accurately known, though it is possible that it was extermi- 

 nated by the coffee-planters. Introduced into Eeunion in 1717, 

 the ^coffee industry was for many years a very important and 

 famous feature of the island ; the greedy Fregilupus, swarming 



