in _St. Paul's Alley_, in St. Paul's Church
Yard, there will be a weekly meeting, every Monday night, of our
namesakes, between the hours of 6 and 8 of the clock in the
evening, in order to choose stewards to revive our antient and
annual feast."--_Domestic Intelligence_, 1681.

_St. Paul's Churchyard._--

"In St. Paul's Church Yard were formerly many shops where music
and musical instruments were sold, for which, at this time, no
better reason can be given than that the service at that
Cathedral drew together, twice a day, all the lovers of music in
London; not to mention that the chairmen were wont to assemble
there, where they were met by their friends and acquaintance."--
_Sir John Hawkins' History of Music_, vol. v. p. 108.

_The French Change, Soho._--A place so called in the reign of Queen
Anne. Gough, in a MS. note, now before us, thought it stood on the site
of the present bazaar.

EDWARD F. RIMBAULT.

* * * * *

NOTES ON THE DODO.

I have to thank "Mr. S.W. SINGER" (No. 22. p. 353.) for giving some
interesting replies to my "Dodo Queries" (No. 17. p. 261.). I trust that
Mr. S. will be induced to pursue the inquiry further, and especially to
seek for some _Portuguese_ account of the Mascarene Islands, prior to
the Dutch expedition of 1598. I am now able to state that the supposed
proof of the discovery of Bourbon by the Portuguese in 1545, on the
authority of a stone pillar, the figure of which Leguat has copied {411}
from Du Qesne, who copied it from Flacourt, turns out to be inaccurate.
On referring to Flacourt's _Histoire de la Grande Isle Madagascar_,
4to., Paris, 1658, p. 344, where the original figure of this monument is
given, I find that the stone was not found in Bourbon at all, but in
"l'Islet des Portugais," a small island at the mouth of the river
Fanshere (see Flacourt, p. 32.), near the S.E. extremity of Madagascar.
From this place Flacourt removed it to the neighbouring settlement of
Fort Dauphin in 1653, and engraved the arms of France on the opposite
side to those of Portugal. We are therefore still without any historical
record of the first discovery of Bourbon and Mauritius, though, from the
unanimous consent of later compilers, we may fairly presume that the
Portuguese were the discoverers.

The references which Mr. Singer has given to two works which mention the
_Oiseau bleu_ of Bourbon, are very important