NOTES 
Title-Page. —The lines on Title-Page occur at the foot of a rude 
Dutch engraving representing the destruction of the Dodos, and are 
thus Englished by Strickland :— 
* For food the seamen hunt the flesh of feathered fowl , 
They tap the Palms , the round-sterned Dodos they destroy , 
The Parrot's life they spare that he may scream and howl , 
And thus his fellows to imprisonment decoy.' 
The plate is to be found in a rare old tract containing the Journal 
of Captain Willem van West-Zanen, who sailed in the fleet of 
Hemskerk and Harmansz, published by H. Soeteboom at Amster¬ 
dam in 1648. A copy is in the British Museum. Vide Strickland, 
op. cit. p. 13, and E. Oustalet, La Faune Ornithologique des lies 
Mascareignes , p. 21. This plate, however, had appeared in an 
edition of van Neck and Warwyck’s voyage (1598), published at 
Amsterdam in 1619. 
Editor’s Preface. P. ix. Mr. Charles Telfair.— Charles Telfair 
was born at Belfast in 1777. He served as a naval surgeon in the 
squadron, commanded by Commodore Rowley, which blockaded the 
islands of Mauritius and Bourbon (then the lie de France and lie 
Bonaparte) in 1809-10. He was one of the very few Englishmen 
who remained in Mauritius after that colony changed rulers, and it 
was owing to his opportunities of understanding and appreciating 
the manners and character of the French Creole colonists, that he 
was also among that still smaller number of British officials, whose 
sentiments towards the natives were of the most friendly nature. 
Dr. Telfair was secretary to the acting Governor of Reunion whilst 
that island remained under British dominion, and subsequently he 
was appointed private secretary to Sir Robert Farquhar. When Sir 
Robert Farquhar left the colony, Telfair remained in the island as 
Guardian of Vacant Estates, and secretary to the Vice-Admiralty 
Court. Mr. Telfair was an ardent naturalist, and sent home to his 
friend, Mr. Robert Barclay of Clapham and Buryhill, Surrey, the 
originator of the Botanical Magazine , numerous botanical rarities, 
including the Coco-de-mer , the Tanghina venenifera , and the 
Telfairia pedata , (a cucurbitaceous plant), Hooker;—whilst his wife, 
a talented draughtswoman, transmitted Algce and drawings to Sir 
William Hooker, who named the Thamnophora Telfairice after her. 
Dr. Telfair sent to England two living specimens of the gigantic 
tortoise of Rodriguez, T. Vosmaeri , and rare Madagascar reptiles. 
One of these big tortoises had died in the Zoological Gardens, circa 
