Although during the winter months flowers, as already mentioned, are scarce in the upper forest, there is very much to interest one in the cryptogamic vegetation which is so abundant everywhere around us. The mosses are seen in great profusion, and of many species. Frequently they occur in dense masses, carpeting the ground and the bases of the trees with a thick cushion-like covering. And of what beautiful and varied colours are these humble plants! light green and all shades of darker green, star-like mosses of pale pink, browns and greys, some bright crimson in colour, and some with waxy-looking fructification stalks; and of all kinds of growth; hair-like filaments, delicate branching forms, some thick like grass, others like seaweeds, others silvery-white on one side and chocolate-brown on the other; but words fail to give any adequate idea of their variety and beauty. During a short ramble a score of well-marked species may soon be gathered. And the lichens are hardly less numerous or beautiful than the mosses: indeed it is sometimes difficult to tell to which order of plants some of these organisms belong. In many drier places the ground is covered with masses of a pale grey species, delicately branched. And almost everywhere the bushes and trees are festooned with the hanging filaments of another pale greyish-white lichen (_Usnea sp._), which give them quite a venerable appearance. Another common species is a branching coral-like one, pale green above, with beautiful shades of brown underneath. The rocks seen all over Imèrina are sometimes perfectly white with minute forms of lichen, but more frequently present a mosaic of differently coloured species: black, white, orange, russet and red. [Sidenote: FUNGI] And the fungi again are quite as noticeable as the other cryptogams, and their colours make them even more conspicuous. On decaying timber, their circular and collar-like forms and bright tints constantly strike one’s attention. From one inch to three or four inches in diameter these plants present a great variety of colour; pure white, pale buff edged with brown, brilliant scarlet, orange, yellow, dark brown, etc.; all these are very common. Some fungi are hard and woody in substance; others are leathery and flexible, others soft and gelatinous; and occasionally one sees specimens a foot in diameter, with delicate shades of browns and greys on their upper surface. It may be easily imagined that with this wealth and variety of cryptogamic forms many of the tree trunks are a perfect flora of the humbler kinds of vegetable growths; for we have not mentioned the delicate hymenophyllum ferns which also cover them in damp situations; or the great hart’s-tongue ferns, which often occupy the forks of the branches; or the innumerable small bulbs of the orchids, which cling, by their long aerial roots, to the trunks and boughs of the trees.