“Walking under some trees and pushing aside the reeds and grass, I was startled, in a moment, by a sudden tingling and pricking sensation over the back of my hands and fingers, for never had come the like to me, in Madagascar or elsewhere. I stopped in sudden surprise, for the pain was severe, and I had touched nothing except the grass. But in another moment the pain increased, the tingling burning sensation seemed extending rapidly up my wrists, and I could see nothing to cause it. But as I lowered my head to look, pain, scalding pain, shot into my ears and neck, growing worse, too, every instant. Dazed and bewildered, I stood a few seconds in helplessness, for I could neither see nor guess at the cause of the terrible distress. Then I got back to my company with agony writ plain enough on every line of my face. “The men started up when they saw me, some of them crying out, ‘You have been stung by the agy.’ Some of them led me to a seat, others rushed for water from the river, and two or three brought sand heaped up in their hands. Then they chafed me with the sand and water to take out the stinging hairs, which they knew caused the mischief. As they rubbed me, I felt the pain abate, and after about a quarter of an hour’s continuance of the operation I was comparatively free from pain. While the men were rubbing me, I was able to discern to some extent the cause of my distress. Countless hairs, like tiny arrows, almost transparent, pointed at either end, and from a third to a fourth of an inch long, had dropped down on me in an invisible shower from the agy-tree, as I passed and stood under it. Ere I came away that afternoon, very cautiously I ventured to examine the tree at a little distance, and found that these tiny hairs grew outside a thickish pod or shell, not quite so large as a small banana. These pods were fully ripe (unluckily for me) just at that very time, and the light wind was scattering their covering.” Mr Baron says that the agy is _Mucuna axillaris_; it is not, however, “a tree,” but a climbing plant, and had grown over the tree under which Mr Montgomery happened to pass. He had himself a similar experience on his way to Mojangà, and the sensation “reminded him of the sting of a nettle, but was ten times more virulent.” [Sidenote: A PERPETUAL DELIGHT]