THE ISLAND OF RODRIGUES, AND ITS FAUNA, 

 AS THEY W^KE, AND AS THEY ARE.* 



By the Rev. H. H. Slatek, B.A., F.Z.S., &c., 

 President Vertebrate Section, Yorkshire Naturalists' Union ; late Naturalist to 

 H.M. Transit of Venus Expedition to Eodrigues, 1874, &c., &c., &c. 



(Continued.) 



Having so- far considered the island in its geographical, commercial, 

 and social aspects, I wish now to direct attention to the fauna ; and, 

 first of aU, to the mammalia. 



The only indigenous mammal at present is a large fruit-eating bat, 

 or flying fox, whose body is about the size of a half-grown rabbit. 

 It has been described by Mr. Dobson under the name of Pteropus 

 rodericensis. It is pretty common, and may be seen in the daytime 

 hanging by its feet from the branches of shady trees, the wings being 

 folded by its sides. At night it begins to fly about, and I twice shot it 

 under the belief that it was an owl, so much did its flight resemble 

 that bird's. The natives are fond of them to eat. I should fancy, from 

 this circumstance, that they would find weasels, polecats, and badgers 

 delicious food, as this bat smells more abominably than they do. 



A most intelligent and trustworthy pair of natives of Mauritius — - 

 one a manager of a fishing station in Rodrigues, — gave me an account 

 of an animal, a small herd of which had visited the island not many 

 years before our visit, and of which herd one of them had killed 

 nearly aU, which makes me certain that the animal in question was 

 the dugong. This animal is getting scarce now, and, as far as I am 

 aware, has not tiU now been recorded to occu?: in any of the Mascarene 

 Islands of late years. They described to me its figure, and its habit 

 of browsing upon some weed beds in shallow water inside the reefs. 

 There is a point, moreover, on the north-west of the island, named in 

 old maps " Pointe des Menatees," which points to this animal ; and a 

 Dutch captain — William van West-Zanen — mentions sea-cows (Koeyen 

 vander Zee) as existing on the island in 1601. Legnat, too, a very 

 trustworthy observer, of whom T shaU have occasion to speak further 

 on, mentions Lamentines (another name for manatees, or dugongs), 

 as one of the good things of the isle which made him regret leaving it 

 in 1693. 



This animal, the dugong, erroneously named in those parts th^e 

 manatee, I may mention for the benefit of such as are not zoologists, 

 is a large and rather unwieldly marine animal, which most writers 

 now-a-days consider to be allied to tl\e whale, dolphin, and porpoise, 



