There are books. And then there are Books. Anthony Cheke?s Lost land of the Dodo: an ecological history of Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues undoubtedly belongs to the latter category. This incredibly ambitious book succeeds in presenting an encyclopaedic amount of knowledge in a highly readable style. By turning its pages one feels like one is discovering the Mascarene Islands for the first time. Needless to say, the experience is often uplifting, occasionally depressing, but always fascinating.

What emerges from Anthony Cheke?s magnum opus is that the Mascarene Islands once rivalled the Galapagos Islands in terms of the richness and uniqueness of their biodiversity. Unfortunately, the parallel stops there. Whereas the Galapagos have managed to preserve their fauna from man?s penchant for destruction; in the Mascarene Islands, animal species started being wiped centuries before Charles Darwin even set off on his seminal journey onboard The Beagle, a journey which spawned his masterpiece The origin of species. The Dodo, for example, disappeared a mere 60 years after the first Dutch sailors set foot on these hallowed shores.

Anthony Cheke writes well. His style is simple without being simplistic. In the book?s eleven chapters, he covers a staggering amount of ground. No titbit of information is deemed to be inconsequential. And, far from telling the reader what to think, the author simply gives voice to History and Science, allowing the facts to speak for themselves.

And goodness, he makes excellent use of the thousands of sources he has pored over in writing Lost land of the Dodo. As one discovers on the inside of the book jacket, Anthony Cheke is a self-confessed rare book junkie given to ?delving into libraries and often being the first person to read ancient books for centuries?. Obscure yet fascinating anecdotes fly thick and fast.

The opening paragraph perfectly sets the stage for what is to come. ?Imagine you are a Dutch sailor in 1598. You have been on a ship in bad weather for weeks since your last landfall, eating dry biscuits and suffering from scurvy ? and suddenly your prayers have been answered. Land has been sighted! Up ahead is one of the mythical islands on the dodgy Portuguese maps that the captain boasted of. Cloud-topped mountains and seductive forests promise water and food ? and as you land after negotiating the reefs, dinner walks up and asks to eaten! Giant juicy tortoises ten times the size of anything seen in Europe and weird fat flightless birds that don?t know to run away. Welcome to Mauritius, a land untouched by man, and about to be changed forever.?

Another welcome feature is the many ?boxes? that pepper the book. Each box offers a detailed description of the islands? endemic species? replete with historical accounts. We learn from Cossigny, for example, that pink pigeons are ?of great beauty, but there is a season of the year in which one must respect them. Many having eaten them at this time have found themselves very sick?.

Over and the above the book?s irreproachable research and limpid writing, it boasts another huge asset in the form of Julian Hume?s exquisite colour plates. These afford the reader a privileged peak at what many of the doomed creatures looked like and, in so doing, drive home the tragedy of their loss with all the more poignancy.

His wondrously evocative paintings act as a sort of time machine, transporting the reader back to those halcyon days before the arrival of man. Depictions of well-known fauna, such as the Solitaire, the Red Hen and, of course, the Dodo mingle with paintings of the exotically-named dugongs, lizard-owls and Hoopoe starlings.

In another plate, we see dozens of giant tortoises peacefully going about their business on a plain above current day Port Mathurin. The caption recounts how a certain Francois Leguat ?claimed he was able to walk for a hundred paces solely on the backs of giant tortoises?. Ancient engravings and illustrations enliven the literature further.

Carl Jones, the conservationist who was instrumental in saving the kestrel from extinction (even after most specialists had that it was too late in the day to do anything of the kind) also makes a pertinent contribution. In Practical Conservation on Mauritius and Rodrigues, he laments ?the loss of species that could have been saved if only someone had thought to nurture the wild populations and establish captive ones?. He goes on to explain how the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation has done just that with several critically endangered species.

Lost land of the Dodo is an invaluable gift to the people of the Mascarene Islands. As such, it should be compulsory reading for anyone even remotely interested in the region?s biodiversity. For, if many species are gone forever, others have been saved from the brink of extinction. Lost land of the Dodo is a timely reminder of how much of our biodiversity has already been lost. More importantly, it is an impassioned plea for the sustained conservation of our remaining endemic fauna.

<I> ?Lost land of the Dodo? is on sale at Librairie Le Printemps at Rs 1,150 . </I>