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[…]”