_Biological Features of Madagascar._--Madagascar possesses an exceedingly rich and beautiful fauna and flora, rivalling in some groups most tropical countries of equal extent, and even when poor in species, of surpassing interest from the singularity, the isolation, or the beauty of its forms of life. In order to exhibit the full peculiarity of its natural history and the nature of the problems it offers to the biological student, we must give an outline of its more important animal forms in systematic order. _Mammalia._--Madagascar possesses no less than sixty-six species of mammals--a certain proof in itself that the island has once formed part of a continent; but the character of these animals is very extraordinary and altogether different from the assemblage now found in Africa or in any other existing continent. Africa is now most prominently characterised by its monkeys, apes, and baboons; by its lions, leopards, and hyaenas; by its zebras, rhinoceroses, elephants, buffaloes, giraffes, and numerous species of antelopes. But no one of these animals, nor any thing like them, is found in Madagascar, and thus our first impression would be that it could never have been united with the African continent. But, as the tigers, the bears, the tapirs, the deer, and the numerous squirrels of Asia are equally absent, there seems no probability of its having been united with that continent. Let us then see to what groups the mammalia of Madagascar belong, and where we must look for their probable allies. First and most important are the lemurs, consisting of six genera and thirty-three species, thus comprising just half the entire mammalian population of the island. This group of lowly-organised and very ancient creatures {417} still exists scattered over a wide area; but they are nowhere so abundant as in the island of Madagascar. They are found from West Africa to India, Ceylon, and the Malay Archipelago, consisting of a number of isolated genera and species, which appear to maintain their existence by their nocturnal and arboreal habits, and by haunting dense forests. It can hardly be said that the African forms of lemurs are more nearly allied to those of Madagascar than are the Asiatic, the whole series appearing to be the disconnected fragments of a once more compact and extensive group of animals. Next, we have about a dozen species of Insectivora, consisting of one shrew, a group distributed over all the great continents; and five genera of a peculiar family, Centetidae, which family exists nowhere else on the globe except in the two largest West Indian Islands, Cuba and Hayti, thus adding still further to our embarrassment in seeking for the original home of the Madagascar fauna.