president’s address. 
543 
best of motives, later clays have shown to be in many parts of the 
world not only a means of destruction of the native animals and 
plants, but also of serious injury to the economic interests of the 
country into which the foreigners have been unluckily imported. 
As to the Wild Geese, Ducks, and perhaps some other birds, of 
which mention is made by the older navigators, it is impossible 
to form any opinion, not that I wish to imply disbelief in their 
statements. 
To begin with the Island of Bourbon, as that lying nearest to 
Madagascar, wo know that even within the lifetime of our con- 
temporaries it was inhabited by two species of birds now e.xtinct, 
the one a rather abnormal Stirling, and the other a Parrot, the 
stuffed skins of which still remain in one museum or another, 
though not in any museum in this country. A third species, a 
Weaver Bird, belonging to a genus well represented in the other 
islands of the whole grouj), was described in the last century by 
Bulfon, and figured by Daubenton. The specimen which furnished 
the description and figure no longer e.xists, so far as I can ascertain. 
I have never heard of any one now living who has ever seen an 
e.xample of the bird. In like manner a Parakeet, described and 
figured as an inhabitant of the island, has certainly not been 
found there for many years past, though it has generally been 
thought to be specifically identical with one that now survives in 
^lauritius. There is also the undoubted testimony that a species 
of Dodo, distinct as it would seem, and as might be exjiected, from 
that which inhabited Mauritius, dwelt in Keunion, to say nothing 
possibly of other birds less clearly indicated. But not even a bone 
of this Dodo, nor any figure of it which we can with certainty 
trust, remains to us now*, so far as any one has been able to 
discover. 
Passing now' to Mauritius. Besides the Dodo, of which so 
much has been written, we have incontestable evidence of the 
former existence of four or five other kinds of birds, which have 
for a longer or shorter time become extinct. That which seems to 
have survived the longest w-as a beautiful Dove, belonging to the 
genus or sub-genus Alectonvnas, and peculiar to the Madagascar 
