8 
it. . . . But among all the species of birds which are found on this isle of sand and on 
all the other islets and rocks which are in the neighbourhood of the Isle of France, 
modem navigators have never found anything approaching to the birds above named, 
and which may be referred to the number of species which may have existed, but which 
have been destroyed by the too great facility with which they are taken, and which are 
no longer found excepting upon islands or coasts entirely uninhabited. At Madagascar^ 
where there are many species of birds unknown in these islands, none have been met 
with resembling the description above alluded to.’ (Observations sur la Physique pour 
I’an 1778, tom. xii. p. 154, notes.) 
“ Mr. Duncan thus concludes his paper above alluded to : — ‘ Having applied, through 
the medium of a friend, to C. Telfair, Esq., of Port Louis, in the Mauritius, a naturalist 
of great research, for any information he could furnish or procure relating to the former 
existence of the Dodo in that island, I obtained only the following partly negative 
statement : — 
“ ‘ That there is a very general impression among the inhabitants that the Dodo did 
exist at Rodriguez, as well as in the Mauritius itself; but that the oldest inhabitants 
have never seen it, nor has the bird or any part of it been preserved in any museum or 
collection formed in those islands, although some distinguished amateurs in natural 
history have passed their lives on them, and formed extensive collections. And with 
regard to the supposed existence of the Dodo in Madagascar, although Mr. Telfair had 
not received, at the time of his writing to Europe, a reply to a letter on the subject 
which he had addressed to a gentleman resident on that island, yet he stated that he 
had not any great expectations from that quarter ; as the Dodo was not mentioned in 
any of his voluminous manuscripts respecting that island, which contained the travels 
of persons who had traversed Madagascar in all directions, many of them having no 
other object in view than that of extending the bounds of natural history.’ 
“We close this part of the case with the evidence of one evidently well qualified to 
judge, and whose veracity there is no reason to doubt. If this evidence be, as we 
believe it to be, unimpeachable, it is clear not only that the Dodo existed, but that it 
was publicly exhibited in London. The lacunae in the print represent the spaces occa- 
sioned by a hole burnt in the manuscript. 
“ In the ‘ Sloane MSS.’ (No. 1839, 5, p. 108, Brit. Mus.) is the following interesting 
account by L’Estrange in his observations on Sir Thomas Browne’s ‘Vulgar Errors.’ It is 
worthy of note that the paragraph immediately follows one on the ‘ Estridge’ (Ostrich). 
“ ‘About 1638, as I walked London streets I saw the picture of a strange fowl 
hong out upon a cloth vas and myselfe with one or two more Gen. in company went 
in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and Avas a great fowle somewhat bigger than 
the largest TurKey Cock and so legged and footed but stouter and thicker and of a 
more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of a yong Cock Fesan (pheasant), and 
on the back of dunn or deare coulour. The keeper called it a Dodo and in the ende of 
