As the season advances the people burn the grass over the hillsides and open moors, as we saw at Ambàtomànga when coming up the country. There can be no doubt that to this practice is largely attributable the bare and treeless appearance of the central provinces. The young trees which would spring up, especially in the hollows and sheltered places, have no chance against the yearly fires which sweep over the country, and the little vegetation which has held its own is constantly liable to be lessened as time goes on. Sometimes a dozen fires, long curving lines of flame, may be seen at once in different directions, and these give a strangely picturesque appearance to the nights of springtime in Imèrina. [Sidenote: BIRDS] The weather often becomes very hot and sultry before the rains come on, and the usually bright clear skies and pure atmosphere of other months are exchanged for thick oppressive days, when the distant hills disappear altogether, and the nearer ones seem quite distant in the dense haze. This is probably due, to a great extent, to the grass-burning just described, and also to the frequent burning of the forest away to the east. As the weather gets warmer a few birds come up from the wooded regions of the country, and wherever there is a small patch of wood the oft-repeated cry of the _Kankàfotra_, the Madagascar cuckoo, may be heard, much resembling the syllables “_kow-kow, kow-kow-koo_.” And here we must notice more fully the birds to be seen in Imèrina. They are few compared with those in the warmer and forest regions, and are mostly of powerful flight, principally birds of prey, swifts, swallows and water-birds. The two coast regions—east and west—are, on the contrary, well peopled with birds of all sorts, and while the greater part of these inhabit indifferently one or the other region, there are a certain number which have their habitat almost exclusively in one region only, and give it its special characteristics. There are also some which keep to a still more limited area, not going beyond a very restricted range. As far as is at present known, two hundred and ten species of birds have been found in Madagascar; and the very special character of its avi-fauna may be seen from the fact that it includes forty-one genera and a hundred and twenty-four species, which are all peculiar to the island. [Sidenote: RAPACIOUS BIRDS]