upturned and rent in pieces: when showers of blazing rocks shot out like meteors into the lurid night, and the molten lava streams flowed like red rivers out of the mouths of these flaming furnaces. Wonderful in the history of the earth has been the agency of fire: nowhere can that agency have been exhibited more grandly in the present age of the earth’s formation than on the great volcanic field of Madagascar. Among the adjuncts of the volcanic field we found four hot springs, three of which are near together in Betafo and Sirabe. The temperature of the spring at Betafo, as tried by Mr. Cameron on our first visit was 130° Fahr. The water seemed perfectly tasteless. In three places we also found jets of carbonic acid gas. Beneath the broad and level plain of Sirabe, extending over fifty square miles, there is evidently a great deposit of lime. The pits of Sirabe, worked by the government convicts, supply nearly all the lime used for building both in the Capital and Imerina at large. With the exception of some lime deposits, containing satin spar, north of Ankárat; and a little sandstone in South Betsileo, this lime of Sirabe is the only secondary rock we met with or heard of in the upper districts of Madagascar. It is massive lime and contains no fossils. It is from this lime that the wells of carbonic acid gas are derived. One well with numerous jets was connected with a filthy mud pool; the water bubbled all over the surface and our bearers could not imagine why it remained quite cold. In a second case the tubular well was dry, and we found butterflies and various insects dead and dying around its mouth: we were told that frogs and mice are also at times found dead there. Among the lime pits the bubbling springs were numerous. At one point a huge tufa rock has been formed, having caverns with stalactites on its eastern side. On the top of the rock there is a natural basin: the water of a spring continually flows up through a crevice, bubbling as it rises. And thus it provides neither more nor less than natural soda water, of which we could drink, as we liked, without charge.