The prolonged moisture, combined with the heat of this time of the year, naturally makes everything grow luxuriantly. The hillsides again become green and pleasant to the eye; our gardens are gay with flowers, and in many places the open downs display a considerable amount of floral beauty. I have never seen elsewhere such a profusion of wild flowers as that which met our view when travelling from the south-west to Antanànarìvo in December 1887. Leaving Antsìrabé and proceeding northwards, the level country was gay with flowers, which literally covered the downs, and in many places gave a distinct and bright colour to the surface of the ground. Among these the most prominent was a pale pink flower on stems from a foot to eighteen inches high, called by the people _kòtosày_ (_Sopubia triphylla_), and also the lovely deep blue flower called _nìfinakànga_, which latter covered the paths and also occurred very abundantly among the grass. In many places, especially near villages, whether deserted or still inhabited, a plant with small pale blue flowers (various species of _Cynoglossum_), almost exactly like our English “forget-me-not,” grew in dense masses, showing a blue-tinted surface even at a considerable distance. The _vonènina_, with a pale pink flower, was very frequent, as well as several species of bright yellow flowers, one with a head of minute florets, looking like a small yellow brush; others were star-shaped, the whole forming in many places a brilliant mass of gold. Three or four species of white-flowered plants, one of them a clematis (_Clematis bojeri_), were very frequent; and a few late examples of terrestrial orchids were seen. Five or six weeks previously these were among the most abundant flowers met with, and their clusters of waxy-white flowers were very conspicuous. Other species of orchid, of rich crimson and also of purple, were even more beautiful. We reckoned that there were from twenty to thirty different species of wild flowers then in bloom on these downs of Vàkinankàratra, gladdening our eyes by their varied beauty and abundance on that glorious morning. The flowers, however, grew much scarcer as we travelled over higher ground; but six weeks previously these upper _tanèty_ had also been gay with great masses of the brilliant crimson flowers of a leguminous plant, which grew in clusters of many scores of spikes growing close together. Our ride that day obliged us to modify the opinions previously held as to the poverty of Madagascar in wild flowers. [8] The Rev. C. P. Cory, B.A., formerly of the Anglican Mission in Madagascar. [9] I am indebted for the information here given about wasps to an interesting paper contributed by Mr Cory to the fourteenth number of _The Antanànarìvo Annual_ for 1890. CHAPTER VIII THE CHANGING MONTHS IN IMÈRINA: CLIMATE, VEGETATION AND LIVING CREATURES OF THE INTERIOR