As a country showing numerous traces of volcanic disturbance, Madagascar is almost every year visited by shocks of earthquake. Happily these are not of a severe character, and little damage is usually done; although often a strange subterranean roar accompanies them and a tremor of several seconds’ duration. The Malagasy still remember a rather severe earthquake which happened many years ago and detached a large mass of rock from the cliffs on the precipitous west side of the ridge on which Antanànarìvo is built. In September 1879 a severe shock, felt most in the Vònizòngo district, was experienced, and lasted for at least thirty seconds; this was accompanied by a loud rumbling sound, as of violent thunder, and in places the ground was split up by the shaking. In the year 1897, again, slight shocks were very numerous, and on some days and nights the earth appeared to have been in a constant state of tremor. These earth movements were felt more especially in the region of old volcanic disturbance about Lake Itàsy, where hundreds of slight shocks were experienced during seven or eight months. On the night of 2nd November four or five sharp movements occurred, one of which was more violent than anything remembered by the Malagasy, and wakened the whole population of the capital and around it in alarm. Chimney-stacks were thrown down, walls were cracked and ceilings damaged. This earthquake appears to have been felt over a very wide extent of country, from Tamatave and the east coast to Mèvatanàna away north-west, and as far as the Bétsiléo province in the south. It had the effect of stopping temporarily the mineral spring at Antsìrabé, which is so exactly like Vichy water; although, curiously enough, the hot-water springs, within a few yards of the other, were not affected. In the Ifànja marsh, a few miles from Itàsy, a small mud geyser is said to have appeared. I will conclude this chapter, in which much has been said of extinct forms of existence, by a glimpse at the ancient animal life of the island. Let us try to sum up these in a few sentences. [Sidenote: GLIMPSES OF THE PAST]