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Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS IN ORIGINAL EDITION
- ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA
- Voyage from Rodriguez to Mauritius; Adventures in that Island, Java, and at the Cape of Good Hope
- Thanksgiving Hymn
- APPENDIX A Abstract of M. J. Codine's Mémoire on the Discovery of the Mascarene Islands
- ADDENDUM.—On M. de Flacourt's Pillar
- ADDENDUM.—List of Bourbon Birds
- APPENDIX B Relation de l'Ile Rodrigue
- APPENDIX C The Fauna of the Mascarene Islands
- APPENDIX D On Extinct Birds of the Mascarene Islands
- APPENDIX E The Gigantic Mascarene Tortoises
- SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE by E. Delmar Morgan.—The Dugong, Halicore Dugong, Leguat's “Manati”
- INDEX
APPENDIX C - The Fauna of the Mascarene Islands
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS IN ORIGINAL EDITION
- ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA
- Voyage from Rodriguez to Mauritius; Adventures in that Island, Java, and at the Cape of Good Hope
- Thanksgiving Hymn
- APPENDIX A Abstract of M. J. Codine's Mémoire on the Discovery of the Mascarene Islands
- ADDENDUM.—On M. de Flacourt's Pillar
- ADDENDUM.—List of Bourbon Birds
- APPENDIX B Relation de l'Ile Rodrigue
- APPENDIX C The Fauna of the Mascarene Islands
- APPENDIX D On Extinct Birds of the Mascarene Islands
- APPENDIX E The Gigantic Mascarene Tortoises
- SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE by E. Delmar Morgan.—The Dugong, Halicore Dugong, Leguat's “Manati”
- INDEX
Summary
M. Milne-Edwards' remarks on the ancient fauna of Rodriguez are so important, as confirming and illustrating Leguat's veracity and exactitude, that they cannot well be omitted. He writes:—
“The Island of Rodriguez, although inhabited at the time when Leguat lived there, seemed, from his accounts, to have a rich vegetation and a varied fauna, whereas to-day the animals there are almost entirely wanting, and its products hardly suffice for the need of a small number of negroes whom the traders of Mauritius keep there for their fishing operations. A change so completely effected in less than two centuries appeared improbable, and the veracity of Leguat was doubted.
“Nevertheless, the assertions of this naturalist deserve to be received with confidence; for the remains belonging to some extinct species, and discovered a few years ago in the cave earths of the island, must be considered as so many irrefutable witnesses of the exactitude of his observations.
“The interesting investigations of MM. Strickland and Melville, in 1848, and next of Messieurs Newton on the bird, which Leguat called the Solitaire, initiated the scientific rehabilitation of this traveller, and in a memoir published some years since I have shown that conformably to his assertions there has formerly existed at Rodriguez some great parrots, of which the species at the present day exists neither in this island nor on any other point of the globe[…]”
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- Information
- The Voyage of François Leguat of Bresse to Rodriguez, Mauritius, Java, and the Cape of Good HopeTranscribed from the First English Edition, pp. 341 - 358Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1891