Types of Carved Ornamentation in Houses 236 ” ” ” 238 Group of Tanàla Girls in Full Dress 242 Tanàla Girls singing and clapping Hands 242 Tanàla Spearmen 248 Coiffures 250 A Forest River 252 Tree Ferns 260 Traveller’s Trees 260 A Malagasy Orchid 272 Malagasy Men dancing 274 Woman of the Antànkàrana Tribe 278 Woman of the Antanòsy Tribe 278 The Fòsa 302 Malagasy Oxen 302 MAPS Physical Sketch Map of Madagascar 16 Ethnographical Sketch Maps of Madagascar 17 General Map of Madagascar 314 [Illustration: PHYSICAL SKETCH-MAP OF MADAGASCAR _showing lines of Forest, and limits of high land of Interior exceeding 2500 feet above Sea-level_] [Illustration: ETHNOGRAPHICAL _SKETCH-MAP_ OF MADAGASCAR] A NATURALIST IN MADAGASCAR CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The great African island of Madagascar has become well known to Europeans during the last half-century, and especially since the year 1895, when it was made a colony of France. During that fifty years many books—the majority of these in the French language—have been written about the island and its people; what was formerly an almost unknown country has been traversed by Europeans in all directions; its physical geography is now clearly understood; since the French occupation it has been scientifically surveyed, and a considerable part of the interior has been laid down with almost as much detail as an English ordnance map. But although very much information has been collected with regard to the country, the people, the geology, and the animal and vegetable productions of Madagascar, there has hitherto been no attempt, at least in the English language, to collect these many scattered notices of the Malagasy fauna and flora, and to present them to the public in a readable form.