“M. Morel (Ecrivain Principal des Hôpitaux au Port-Louis de l’Isle de France) writes as follows in his paper ‘Sur les oiseaux monstrueux nommés Dronte, Dodo, Cygne Capuchonné, Solitaire, et Oiseau de Nazare, et sur la petite Isle de Sable à 50 lieues environ de Madagascar.’ ‘These birds, so well described in the second volume of the ‘History of Birds,’ by M. le Comte de Buffon, and of which M. de Borame has also spoken in his ‘Dictionary of Natural History,’ under the names of Dronte, Dodo, Hooded Swan (Cygne Capuchonné), Solitary or Wild Turkey (Dinde sauvage) of Madagascar, have never been seen in the isles of France, Bourbon, Rodriguez, or even the Seychelles lately discovered, during more than sixty years since when these places have been inhabited and visited by French colonists. The oldest inhabitants assure every one that these monstrous birds have been always unknown to them.’ After some remarks that the Portuguese and Dutch who first overran these islands may have seen some very large birds, such as Emeus or Cassowaries, &c., and described them each after his own manner of observing, M. Morel thus proceeds: ‘However this may be, it is certain that for nearly an age (depuis près un siècle) no one has here seen an animal of this species. But it is very probable that before the islands were inhabited, people might have been able to find some species of very large birds, heavy and incapable of flight, and that the first mariners who sojourned there soon destroyed them from the facility with which they were caught. This was what made the Dutch sailors call the bird ‘Oiseau de dégoût’ (Walck-Voegel), because they were surfeited with the flesh of it.... But among all the species of birds which are found on this isle of sand and on all the other islets and rocks which are in the neighbourhood of the Isle of France, modern navigators have never found anything approaching to the birds above named, and which may be referred to the number of species which may have existed, but which have been destroyed by the too great facility with which they are taken, and which are no longer found excepting upon islands or coasts entirely uninhabited. At Madagascar, where there are many species of birds unknown in these islands, none have been met with resembling the description above alluded to.’ (Observations sur la Physique pour l’an 1778, tom. xii. p. 154, notes.) “Mr. Duncan thus concludes his paper above alluded to:—‘Having applied, through the medium of a friend, to C. Telfair, Esq., of Port Louis, in the Mauritius, a naturalist of great research, for any information he could furnish or procure relating to the former existence of the Dodo in that island, I obtained only the following partly negative statement:—