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 the Tuileries under the directorship of Giovanni Paisiello. As such, three years later, on 2 December 1804, Lays was the lead soloist in the music accompanying Napoleon's coronation as emperor. The ensuing celebrations culminated at the Hôtel de Ville on 16 December with Lays and Chéron singing the cantata "Trasibule", specially written for the occasion by Henri-Montan Berton. In 1810, when Napoleon divorced Josephine and entered into a second marriage with the Austrian Archduchess Marie Louise, Lays was the obvious choice to perform at the wedding ceremony. Meanwhile, his stage activity continued unabated, and in 1807 he was also appointed