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 April 1785, although even then his relationship with the trio of rebel singers did not improve very much. In a report to his superiors, Dauvergne described Lays as the black sheep of the group, Rousseau as a "nice young man", if only he had spent less time in the company of Lays, and Chéron as another "nice young man" (with the mind of a twelve-year-old), but scared of the beating Lays and Rousseau had promised him if he betrayed their alliance. In the end, the three had to bow to pressure from the theatre management, although not before being promoted