It seems probable that Madagascar, when the first representatives of mankind occupied it, was a country much more fully covered by lakes and marshes, and also by forest, than it is at present. In these waters, amid vast cane-brakes and swamps of papyrus and sedge, wallowed and snorted herds of hippopotami; huge tortoises crawled over the low lands on their margins; tall ostrich-like birds, some over ten feet high, and others no larger than bustards, stalked over the marshy valleys; great rails hooted and croaked among the reeds, and clouds of large geese and other water-fowl flew screaming over the lakes; on the sand-banks crocodiles lay by scores basking in the sun; great ape-like lemurs climbed the trees and caught the birds; troops of river-hogs swam the streams and dug up roots among the woods; and herds of slender-legged zebu-oxen grazed on the open downs. These were the animals which the first wild men hunted with their palm-bark spears, and shot with their arrows tipped with burnt clay or stone.[25] And as we look further back through long-past geological ages, when the clays and sandstones of the oolite, and the white masses of the chalk were being deposited in the coral-studded tropic seas and archipelagoes of Europe and other parts of the world, and when Madagascar was probably no island, but a peninsula of Eastern Africa, the mist opens for a moment, and we see vast reptile forms dimly through the haze; great slender-snouted gavials in the streams and lakes, sloths moving slowly along the branches of the trees, and huge dinosaurs, sixty to eighty feet long, crawling over the wooded plains, and tearing down whole trees with their powerful arms. Such are some glimpses of the Madagascar of the past which the study of its rocks and fossils already opens to the mental eye. We may confidently look for further light upon the dim and distant bygone ages as we learn more of the geology of the country. The thick curtain which at present shrouds the old-world times will be yet more fully lifted, and we shall probably, ere many more years have passed, be able to draw many more mental pictures of the extinct animal life of the great African island. [23] See “Recherches sur les Lémuriens disparus et en particulier sur ceux qui vivaient à Madagascar.” Par G. Grandidier. _Nouv. Arch. du Muséum_, 4e série, tome vii., 144 pp. 1905. Also “On Recently Discovered Subfossil Primates from Madagascar.” By Herbert F. Standing, D.Sc. _Trans. Zool. Soc._, vol. xviii., pt. ii., pp. 59-217. May 1908. These extinct lemuroids have been classed in the following genera:—_Megaladapis_ (3 sp.), _Lemur_ (2 sp.), _Palæopropithecus_ (4 sp.), _Archæolemur_ (2 sp.), _Poradylemur_ (1 sp.), _Hadropithecus_ (1 sp.), _Mesopropithecus_ (1 sp.), and _Archæoindris_ (1 sp.). [24] No rocks of the Primary formations have been discovered in Madagascar, nor does it seem probable that any exist. [Sidenote: THE VAZÌMBA]