146 Appendices 
assured, at the Isle Bourbon,’ Levaillant has but reproduced in 
an altered form the following information furnished by Buffon, 1 
‘ M. de Querhoent assures us that it is found on Isle Bourbon, 
where it has been transported from Madagascar,’ for he could 
not have found in the description by Brisson, which he quotes at 
the same time as that of Buffon, any indication of its native 
country. It is likewise after Buffon that Linnaeus thought him¬ 
self able to add, in his Mantissa , 2 to the very brief Latin diagnosis 
of Psittacus Mascarinus, the words ‘ Habitat in Mascarina,’ after 
having previously said in the twelfth edition of the Systema 
Natures, , 3 regarding the same species identified with the Psittacus 
obscurus , ‘Habitat in Africa?’ By Mascarina he evidently 
means the island Mascaregne or Mascarenne of Leguat, of Du¬ 
bois, and other travellers of the last century, that is to say, 
not the island of Madagascar but the island of Bourbon or 
Reunion. 
None of all the modern authors, Bechstein, Kuhn, Vieillot, 
Lesson, Wagler, Hahn, Dr. Finsch, etc., who have attributed 
Madagascar as the country of the Mascarin, have brought any new 
document for the determination of the place of origin of this 
species, and they can only repeat the assertion of Levaillant, 
against which can be invoked a positive fact, viz., that neither 
M. Grandidier nor other travellers who have explored Madagascar 
in the course of recent years, have discovered the least trace of 
the existence of the Mascarin. We ought to say, however, that 
in the Relation of the Sieur de Flacourt, who visited Madagascar 
in the middle of the seventeenth century, 4 we have found in the 
chapter devoted to land birds, the following passage, of which a 
part can strictly be applied to the Mascarinus Duboisi :— £ Vaza , 
this is the Parrot which is black in this country. There are some 
small ones which are reddish brown ; but they have trouble in getting 
theml One might even infer from these last words that the 
Mascarin, which has, in fact, a reddish-brown chin, was already 
more rare, or perhaps was only more wild than the Vazas, but it 
remains to be explained under what circumstances the first species 
has disappeared, whilst the Vazas have been perpetuated to the 
present day. 
. . . The fact of the presence of the Mascarin in He Bourbon 
during the last century is moreover attested by M. de Querhoent, 
1 Histoire naturelle des Oiseaux , 1779, t. vi. p. 121. 
2 1771, p. 524. 3 1766, t. i. p. 140, No. 4. 
4 Relation de la grande isle Madagascar, chap. xxx. p. 163. Paris, 1661. 
