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François Leguat
François Leguat (1637/1639 – September 1735) was a French explorer and naturalist. He was one of a small group of male French Protestant refugees who in 1691 settled on the then uninhabited island of Rodrigues in the western Indian Ocean. The colonists became discontented with their life on the island and after a stay of two years managed to escape to Mauritius in a small boat. Leguat arrived back in Europe in June 1698 and wrote a book recounting his adventures which was published in 1708. In his book Leguat describes several species of birds and tortoises that were endemic to Rodrigues but are now extinct. Life François Leguat was a French Huguenot originating from the Province of Bresse, now part of the department of Ain, who fled to Holland in 1689 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Marquis Henri du Quesne had published a book giving a glowing description of the island of Réunion and, with the cooperation of the Dutch East India Company, was planning ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reef
A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock outcrops, etc.—but there are also reefs such as the coral reefs of tropical waters formed by biotic processes dominated by corals and coralline algae, and artificial reefs such as shipwrecks and other anthropogenic underwater structures may occur intentionally or as the result of an accident, and sometimes have a designed role in enhancing the physical complexity of featureless sand bottoms, to attract a more diverse assemblage of organisms. Reefs are often quite near to the surface, but not all definitions require this. Earth's largest coral reef system is the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, at a length of over . Biotic There is a variety of biotic reef types, including oyster reefs and sponge reefs, but the most massive and widely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Pasfield Oliver
Samuel Pasfield Oliver (1838–1907) was an English artillery officer, geographer and antiquary. Life Born at Bovinger, Essex, on 30 October 1838, he was the eldest and only surviving son of William Macjanley Oliver, rector of Bovinger, by his wife Jane Weldon. He entered Eton College in 1853; and after passing through the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he received a commission in the Royal Artillery on 1 April 1859. In the following year he went out with his battery to China, where hostilities had been renewed. The First Convention of Beijing was however signed soon after Oliver's arrival (24 October 1860), and his service was confined to garrison duty at Canton (Guangzhou), Canton. On the establishment of a British embassy at Beijing in 1861 he accompanied General Sir John Michel on a visit to the capital, and subsequently made a tour through Japan. In the following year he was transferred to Mauritius; and from there with Major-general Johnstone on a mission to Madagascar t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database.The basic Google book link is found at: https://books.google.com/ . The "advanced" interface allowing more specific searches is found at: https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search Books are provided either by publishers and authors through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives. The Publisher Program was first known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. The Google Books Library Project, which scans works in the collections of library partners and adds them to the digital invent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newton's Parakeet
Newton's parakeet (''Psittacula exsul''), also known as the Rodrigues parakeet or Rodrigues ring-necked parakeet, is an extinct species of parrot that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Rodrigues in the western Indian Ocean. Several of its features diverged from related species, indicating long-term isolation on Rodrigues and subsequent adaptation. The rose-ringed parakeet of the same genus is a close relative and probable ancestor. Newton's parakeet may itself have been ancestral to the endemic parakeets of nearby Mauritius and Réunion. Around long, Newton's parakeet was roughly the size of a rose-ringed parakeet. Its plumage was mostly greyish or slate blue in colour, which is unusual in ''Psittacula'', a genus containing mostly green species. The male had stronger colours than the female and possessed a reddish instead of black beak, but details of a mature male's appearance are uncertain; only one male specimen is known, and it is believed to be immature. Matur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cylindraspis Vosmaeri
The saddle-backed Rodrigues giant tortoise (''Cylindraspis vosmaeri)'' is an extinct species of giant tortoise in the family Testudinidae. The species was endemic to Rodrigues. Human exploitation caused the extinction of this species around 1800. Etymology The specific name, ''vosmaeri'', is in honor of Dutch naturalist Arnout Vosmaer (1720–1799). Taxonomy Both ''Cylindraspis vosmaeri'' and its smaller domed relative, ''Cylindraspis peltastes'', were descended from an ancestral species on Mauritius (an ancestor of '' Cylindraspis inepta''), which colonised Rodrigues by sea many millions of years ago, and then gradually differentiated into the two Rodrigues species. Description The saddle-backed Rodrigues giant tortoise was an exceptionally tall species of giant tortoise, with a long, raised neck and an upturned carapace, which gave it a giraffe-like body shape almost similar to that of a sauropod dinosaur. It lived by browsing the taller vegetation, while its much smaller ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cylindraspis Peltastes
The domed Rodrigues giant tortoise (''Cylindraspis peltastes'') is an extinct species of giant tortoise in the family Testudinidae. It was endemic to Rodrigues. It appears to have become extinct around 1800, as a result of human exploitation. Description The domed Rodrigues giant tortoise was one of the smallest of the giant tortoises of the Indian Ocean, reaching a length of just over 40 cm and an estimated weight of around 12 kg. A low grazer of grasses, it shared Rodrigues Island with its much larger relative, the saddle-backed Rodrigues giant tortoise, which browsed the taller vegetation. Both species were descended from an ancestral species on Mauritius (an ancestor of '' Cylindraspis inepta''), which colonised Rodrigues by sea many millions of years ago, and then differentiated into the two Rodrigues species. Ecology and extinction At the time of the arrival of human settlers, dense giant tortoise herds of many thousands were reported on Rodrigues. Like man ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodrigues Rail
The Rodrigues rail (''Erythromachus leguati''), also known as Leguat's gelinote or Leguat's rail, is an extinct species of the Rallidae, rail family that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Rodrigues, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It is generally kept in its own genus, ''Erythromachus'', but has sometimes been assigned to the genus ''Aphanapteryx'' along with its close relative the red rail (''A. bonasia'') of Mauritius; their relationship with other rails is unclear. The Rodrigues rail was about long and weighed at least . It was described as having grey plumage, a red beak, red legs, and a naked red patch around the eye. The beak was long and curved downwards. It was flightless and fed on tortoise eggs. It was described as being attracted to red objects, which humans exploited while hunting it. The Rodrigues rail is believed to have become extinct in the mid-18th century because of predation by introduced cats and destruction of its habitat by tortoise hunters. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodrigues Solitaire
The Rodrigues solitaire (''Pezophaps solitaria'') is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Rodrigues, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Genetically within the family of pigeons and doves, it was most closely related to the also extinct dodo of the nearby island Mauritius, the two forming the subfamily Raphinae. The Nicobar pigeon is their closest living genetic relative. Rodrigues solitaires grew to the size of swans, and demonstrated pronounced sexual dimorphism. Males were much larger than females and measured up to in length and in weight, contrasting with and for females. Its plumage was grey and brown; the female was paler than the male. It had a black band at the base of its slightly hooked beak, and its neck and legs were long. Both sexes were highly territorial, with large bony knobs on their wings that were used in combat. The Rodrigues solitaire laid a single egg that was incubated in turn by both sexes. Gizzard stones helped digest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maximilien Misson
Francis Maximilian Misson, originally François Maximilien Misson (c.1650 – 12 January 1722), was a French writer and traveller. Born in Lyon, he fled France at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes The Edict of Fontainebleau (22 October 1685) was an edict issued by French King Louis XIV and is also known as the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Edict of Nantes (1598) had granted Huguenots the right to practice their religion without s ... in 1685 and settled in Britain. He travelled through Italy during 1687 and 1688, and in 1691 published the ''Nouveau voyage d'ltalie'', which was to be the standard travel guide to Italy for the following fifty years. In 1698 he published his second work ''Mémoires et observations faites par un voyageur en Angleterre'',. Henri Misson is given as the author but the book is usually attributed to the author's brother, François Maximilien Mission. and in 1708 his final book ''A new voyage to the East-Indies''. References External li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Batavia, Dutch East Indies
Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The area corresponds to present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. Batavia can refer to the city proper or its suburbs and hinterland, the Ommelanden, which included the much-larger area of the Residency of Batavia in the present-day Indonesian provinces of Jakarta, Banten and West Java. The founding of Batavia by the Dutch in 1619, on the site of the ruins of Jayakarta, led to the establishment of a Dutch colony; Batavia became the center of the Dutch East India Company's trading network in Asia. Monopolies on local produce were augmented by non-indigenous cash crops. To safeguard their commercial interests, the company and the colonial administration absorbed surrounding territory. Batavia is on the north coast of Java, in a sheltered bay, on a land of marshland and hills crisscrossed with canals. The city had two centers: Oud Batavia (the oldest part of the city) and the relatively-newer city, on higher ground to the south. It was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
