Je tuai aussi
deux _chauve-souris_ d'une espece particuliere, _de couleur
violette_, avec de petites taches jaunes, ayant une espece de
crampon aux ailes, par ou cet _oiseau_ se pend aux branches
des arbres, et _un bec de perroquet_. Les Hollandois disent
qu'elles sont bonnes a manger; et qu'en certaine saison, elles
valent bien nos becasses."

At Bourbon, he says,--

"On y voit grandes nombres _d'oiseau bleu_ qui se
nichent dans les herbes et dans les fougeres."

This was in the year 1710. There were then, he says, not more than
forty Dutch settlers on the Island of Mauritius, and they were daily
hoping and expecting to be transferred to Batavia. As editor (La
Roque) subjoins a relation furnished on the authority of M. de Vilers,
who had been governor there for the India Company, in which it is
said,-- {354}

"The island was uninhabited when the Portuguese, after having
doubled the Cape of Good Hope, discovered it. They gave it the
name of Mascarhenas, _a cause que leur chef se nommoit ainsi_;
and the vulgar still preserve it, calling the inhabitants
_Mascarins_. It was not decidedly inhabited until 1654, when
M. de Flacour, commandant at Madagascar, sent some invalids
there to recover their health, that others followed; and since
then it has been named the Isle of Bourbon."

Still no notice of the _Dodo!_ but

"On y trouve des oiseaux appelez _Flamans_, qui excedent la
hauteur d'un grand homme."

Qu. 6. I know not whether Mr. S. is aware that there is the head of a
Dodo in the Royal Museum of Natural History at Copenhagen, which came
from the collection of Paludanus? M. Domeny de Rienzi, the compiler of
_Oceanie, ou cinquieme Partie du Globe_ (1838, t. iii. p. 384.), tells
us, that a Javanese captain gave him part of a _Dronte_, which he
unfortunately lost on being shipwrecked; but he forgot where he said
he obtained it.

Qu. 7. _Dodo_ is most probably the name given at first to the bird by
the Portuguese; _Doudo_, in that language, being a fool or _lumpish_
stupid person. And, besides that name, it bore that of _Toelpel_ in
German, which has the same signification. The _Dod-aers_ of the Dutch
is most probably a vulgar epithet of the Dutch sailors, expressive of
its _lumpish_ conformation and inactivity. Our sailors would possibly
have substituted heavy-a----. I find the Dodo was also called the
_Monk-swan_ of St. Maurice's Island at the