Abstract
Primarily a business-minded association though it was, the French East India Company nevertheless played an extremely important part in other, non-profit-seeking fields, e.g. the transportation of wild animais from India to France in the 18th century, a time of natural sciences craze, due to the initiative of scientists (Réaumur, Jussieu, Buffon) as well as of members of the nobility, especially the king himself, always keen on peopling his ménagerie at Versailles. Numbers of tigers, civet-cats, several varieties of deers, birds, were brought in early. Two major events were the arrivai of the French King's first rhino, in 1770, and that of the first Tibetan musk-deer, in 1772, a first-hand description of which was published by Daubenton in the Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences. Their skeletons are still being kept in the main gallery of the French National Natural History Museum in Paris (n° A 7974 and A 11286).
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