Elephant bird determined that "Vorombe titan" reached weights of and stood tall, making it the world's largest bird, slightly larger than the much older "Dromornis stirtoni". Elephant birds have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar in the 1640s and 1650s, mentions an ostrich-like bird said to inhabit unpopulated regions, though it is unclear whether he was repeating folk tales passed on from generations earlier. In 1659, Flacourt wrote of the "vouropatra – a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places
François Lays on a high note, sent the minister a petition signed by almost all the stars of the Opéra and backed by Cherubini, asking for another benefit concert, in addition to the one three years earlier, this time in aid of his son who was working as a "saute-ruisseau"' at a notary’s and whose legal studies Lays could not afford to maintain. Inevitably the request fell on deaf ears. Lays also asked for his pension to be recalculated, bearing in mind his years teaching at the conservatory. But this led to disputes to which the correspondence between Cherubini and La Rochefoucauld