Another stinging plant, the _Agy_, with fine needle-like hairs, which fall in showers and produce fearful irritation, is described in a subsequent chapter. Many trees in the forest are armed with blunt prickles, which injure the hand if they are touched when making one’s way through the dense vegetation. In the extreme south of the island there are trees or shrubs called _Fàntsi-òlotra_ (“nail-edged”?), probably a species of _Didierea_, whose thorny stems, always turned towards the south, are said to resemble a barricade of elephants’ trunks; the stem, which is as big as a man’s thigh, is entirely covered with large thorns, between which grow the small round leaves. On one of these thorny trees, however, M. Lemaire found a white lemur (_Propithecus verrauxii_) clinging, which, when dislodged, went leaping across the country on its hind legs, after the fashion of a kangaroo. [Illustration: ANÀLAMAZÀOTRA A VILLAGE IN THE GREAT FOREST Cattle pens and characteristic forest trees are shown] [Sidenote: FOREST DWELLERS] Someone may perhaps ask: Where are the people of these woods? In the upper belt of forest there are few inhabitants except woodcutters, and in small hamlets on the side of the main tracks passing through it; but farther south, where the two lines unite, we shall find, as we travel past the Bétsiléo province and east of it, a considerable number of people, who are loosely called “Tanàla,” which simply means “forest-dwellers,” and of these there are many subdivisions. There are vague and uncertain accounts given by the Malagasy of a tribe of people whom they call Béhòsy, and who are said to live in a wooded country in the west of the island. Their food is honey, eels and lemurs, which latter are caught in traps and fattened. They are very dark in colour and are much like the Sàkalàva in appearance, and are said to jump from tree to tree like monkeys, and cannot easily be followed, as the country is rocky. They make network of cords, hence their name (_hòsy_, string, twine). They are extremely timid, and, if captured, die of fright. These Béhòsy seem to resemble in some of their habits the “monkey-men” of Dourga Strait, New Guinea; but it is much to be wished that more definite information could be obtained about them, for, if what we hear of them is correct, they are probably of a different stock to the rest of the inhabitants of Madagascar.