Our third day’s voyage took us again along a very beautiful extent of park-like scenery. All yesterday afternoon we were gradually approaching a long line of blue hills running north-north-west and south-south-east, and this morning we got nearer to them. They appeared to be about a thousand feet high, and almost covered with dense forest, with patches of rock and red clay showing here and there. Landing at noon for lunch among magnificent trees, I noticed that these were swarming with ants, which covered the trunks and devoured every fruit as soon as it became ripe.
The Fòsa
It is the largest Madagascar carnivore, and is like a small jaguar
Malagasy Oxen
Note their large humps and horns
A FIERCE ANIMAL
During this journey to the north-west, we saw no mammals except herds of oxen; but as there are a few others, it will be fitting here to say something about the largest carnivorous animal found in the island, especially as this district is its special habitat. This creature is called by the people, Fòsa (Cryptoprocta ferox), and although small is very ferocious, as its specific name denotes. The fòsa differs from most of the felidæ by the greater elongation of the body, including the head, and it is plantigrade, like the bears, and not digitigrade, like the majority of the cats. In its structure it resembles the jaguar, and in its colouring the puma, indeed it is very like a small jaguar, as it has thick glossy fur of a tawny-brown, which becomes somewhat darker under the body. Its total length is four feet eight inches, but of this the tail occupies two feet two inches, and it stands about one foot three inches high. For its size, the animal is powerful, but it is not dangerous to man, except when it is wounded, or at the breeding season. It is destructive to poultry and small animals, and it is able to emit a very fetid odour from an anal pouch, with which fowls are said to be killed. Examples of the fòsa have been seen in the outskirts of the upper belt of forest on the east side of the island; and of somewhat larger size than the dimensions already given. A specimen I once saw was of a beautiful black colour, but I believe this was only a variety, and not a distinct species from the brown animal. The fòsa is much dreaded by the Malagasy, and, from its mode of attack, appears to be like an immense weasel, attacking large animals, such as the wild boar and even oxen. Like the aye-aye among the quadrumana, and many of the native birds, the fòsa has no near relative, and therefore a new family had to be formed for it, of which it is the only genus and species.
The other carnivora of Madagascar are all small animals, and are rarely seen except when trapped. They all belong to the viverridæ or civets, two to the civets proper, five (or six) being mungooses, and one, an ichneumon. The mungooses, known to the Malagasy under the name of Vontsìra, somewhat resemble the weasels and ferrets of Europe, except that they are not exclusively flesh feeders. They feed upon poultry, rats and mice, and also fruits. The ichneumon, or Fanàloka, is about twenty inches long, with a bushy tail of about a third that length, and is covered with thick warm brown fur. Its claws are long and are used to dig up the eggs of the crocodile, on which it is said to feed.
COLOURED FISH
Although we saw an occasional angler on the banks of the river, we were not fortunate enough to see any of the fish. According to M. Pollen, the rivers of the north-west contain a number of fish, many of which are coloured in a most striking manner; the plates of his valuable work on the fauna of the island show these as banded and barred with the most vivid colours—blue, scarlet, black and yellow—in fact, very much like those strikingly coloured and curiously marked fishes which inhabit the sea round coral reefs and feed upon the brightly tinted polyps.