EDITOR’S PREFACE 
Half a century ago the president of the Ashmolean 
Society in his monograph— The Dodo and its Kindred — 
mentioned the expedition of Admiral de la Haye to 
the Island of Bourbon, and referred particularly to the 
account given of it by ‘ one of the party, who calls him¬ 
self the Sieur D.B.’ ‘ His journal,’ he added, ‘ is con¬ 
tained in a MS. given by Mr. Telfair to the Zoological 
Society of London, which I hope will not be allowed 
to remain much longer unpublished.’ This modern manu¬ 
script copy, still preserved in the library of the Zoological 
Society, consists of 246 pages quarto notepaper, bearing 
the water-mark of Britannia in oval cartouche, surmounted 
by a crown, with the name /. Whatman , and dates, varying 
on the different quires, from 1805 to 1811, showing that 
the sheets were manufactured at the well-known Turkey 
Mill, before the Springfield paper-mills were established 
on the Medway at Maidstone. The pages are stitched 
into a somewhat weather-beaten leather cover with mottled 
red and blue paper lining, whilst the outer edges are much 
stained, apparently by sea-water, as though the book had 
been well handled on deck of some homeward-bound 
East Indiaman during its owner’s passage from Mauritius. 
When Strickland first quoted this MS. to the Zoological 
Society in 1844, he did not know the name of the author, 
or that the journal had ever been printed, because Mr. 
