“To spend a night in the forest is an experience worth having. Bivouacked in some open glade, through which a small stream creeps lazily along, with a warm cheering fire to keep off the dew and chill of the night, one gains a quite different knowledge of the forest from that which one gets in the daytime, for all nature is not asleep even in the midnight hour. Just as darkness is setting in the fireflies with their tiny lanterns flit about among the bushes; and the cicada, of various species, perched on the trunks of trees, commence their strange song. They are small in size, but certainly they make a big din. Well may the Malagasy proverb say: ‘Don’t be like the cicada, whose voice fills the whole valley, though the creature itself is but a mouthful.’ The sound it makes is not a buzz-z exactly, and it is not a hum-m-m. It is a deafening, unceasing, rasping, irritating monotone. As the darkness increases, various nocturnal creatures come forth from their hiding-places, and every now and then pounce on their unconscious prey. Keep awake a while and listen to the strange and, for the most part, mysterious sounds. Suddenly there is a terrific scream. Some bird or beastie finds itself all at once in the jaws of death. And what is that ceaseless creaking throughout the night? Fancy or fear pictures some strange hobgoblin; it is, however, nothing but the leaves of a screw-pine twisted and strained by the breeze. And what is that remarkable string of sounds for all the world like water bubbling out a bottle? It is the _Tolòho_, a kind of cuckoo, disturbed in its night’s repose. And then, at regular intervals, ‘_kow-kow-koo, kow-kow-koo_’; what is that? Another cuckoo, the _Kankàfotra_, which never seems to go to sleep. From the stream or marsh close by there rises the unmusical croak of the frogs. After an interval of silence, you first of all hear a single croak, then another, and another, until gradually there arises a perfect chorus, which is kept up throughout the night. The tree-frogs also, perched on the leaves, not a whit behind their cousins in the marsh, pass the night in croaking. Numerous other strange and weird noises are to be heard during the night in the forest, but from what throats they proceed it is beyond me to say.” [Illustration: Epeira Madagascariensis] CHAPTER XIV ROUND ANTSIHÀNAKA Some years ago I was asked to accompany two gentlemen on a journey to one of the then least-known provinces of Madagascar, that occupied by the Sihànaka or lake-dwellers. Two of our party took surveying instruments with them, and we were thus able to prepare the first accurate map of the Antsihànaka province.