“It may now be said that the vegetable productions of the island have been very extensively explored, and that the majority of the plants inhabiting it are known to science. The country has been traversed by botanists in many different directions, its highest mountains have been ascended, its lakes and marshes crossed, its forests penetrated, and large collections of plants have been made. About four thousand one hundred species of plants have now been named and described, and I think it may be said with certainty that the great bulk of Madagascarian plants have already been gathered, so that we have now sufficient data to enable us to draw a few general conclusions as to the character and distribution of this very interesting and remarkable flora. Of the four thousand one hundred indigenous plants at present known in Madagascar, about three thousand (or three-fourths of the total flora) are, remarkable to say, only found here. Even of the grasses and rushes, about two-fifths of each order are peculiar to the island. There is one natural order confined to Madagascar, the Chlænaceæ; of ferns more than a third are endemic, and of orchids as much as five-sixths, facts which are sufficient to give a very marked individuality to the character of the flora.”
Mr Baron gives the following graphic account of his experiences as a collector of plants:—
BOTANISING IN MADAGASCAR
“Botanising in Madagascar, as those who have travelled in wild and uncivilised regions in other parts of the world will easily believe, is a totally different experience from botanising in England. Your collecting materials are carried by a native, who may be honest, or not, in which latter case the drying paper will begin gradually and mysteriously to disappear, and the leather straps with which the presses are tightened will, one by one, be quietly appropriated. For a Malagasy bearer has a special weakness for leather straps, they being largely used for belts, so that both for the sake of your own comfort and the honesty of the men, the sooner you dispense with them the better. As for the dried plants themselves, they are secure from all pilfering; for of what possible use or value they can be, it puzzles the natives to conceive. You might leave your collection in a village for a whole month, and you would find on your return it was still intact. If, after a day’s journey, you sit down in a hut to change the sheets of paper containing the specimens, the villagers will be sure to come and, standing round in a circle, gaze at you in mute astonishment turning over the plants so well known to them. After a few minutes’ silent gaze, there will perhaps be a sudden outburst of amused laughter, or it may be a little whispering, which, if it were audible, would be something to this effect: ‘Whatever in the world is the man doing?’ or, ‘What strange creatures these white men are!’
“Some of the people doubtless think that you are a kind of sorcerer. For these dried plants—whatever can you do with them? You cannot eat them. You cannot make them into broth. You cannot plant them, for they are dead. You cannot form them in bouquets or wreaths, for they are brown and withered. Is it surprising, then, if some of the natives think that you are dabbling in the black art, and that your plants, in the shape of some strange and mysterious decoction, are to supply, it may be, a potent rain-medicine, or a love-philtre, or a disease-preventing physic? For among the natives themselves there are many herbal quacks, who, for a consideration, are able, not only to prescribe for the cure, and even prevention, of disease, but also to furnish charms against fire and tempest, locusts or lightning, leprosy or lunacy, ghosts, crocodiles, or witches. The explanation which I have most frequently heard given, however, by the more intelligent of the natives as to the use of the dried plants is that the leaves are intended to be employed for patterns in weaving.
“It is not, then, the natives that you have to fear in regard to your collections of plants; it is the weather, it is those heavy showers that, unless protected with extreme care by waterproof coverings, succeed in soaking your specimens and your drying paper, so that you have occasionally to spend half the night in some dirty hovel in doing what you can, by the aid of a large fire, to save your collection from destruction. Still all the difficulties and discomforts are far more than outweighed by the pleasure you gain in the exercise, a pleasure which is enhanced by the consciousness that you are probably the first that has ever plucked the flowers from Nature’s bosom in that particular locality, and that a large number of the specimens will probably prove to be new to science.”
NESTS OF INSECTS
Although to anyone merely travelling through it, this upper forest seems, especially in the cold season, to be singularly deficient in animal life, yet to those who will carefully observe, as they ramble through these woods, there are numerous small living creatures well worth careful study. One cannot pass many yards along a forest path without noticing here and there a long white bag hanging on the trees and bushes. These vary in length from about six inches to a foot, or even eighteen inches, and are a long oval in shape; the upper part shines with a silky lustre, and the whole would do so, but for its being filled at the lower part with a mass of dark brown earthy substance, which soils its purity. On cutting open the upper portion of the bag, which is tough and strong, it is found to be filled with a mass of brown caterpillars, about an inch and a half long, all wriggling about when thus disturbed in their comfortable home. The dark substance is evidently the droppings of these caterpillars; and the opening at the lower end, sometimes small holes around it, give exit and entrance, for generally two or three of the insects are seen crawling on the outside. It would appear, therefore, that this silken bag is the nest or home spun by the caterpillars, a common habitation in which they undergo the next change before becoming perfect insects. One always sees that the branches near that on which the bag is suspended are stripped of the leaves, no doubt by its inmates. I noticed that, a day or two after I had cut open one of these bags, a thin film of web had been spun over the opening, so as to close up the entrance I had unceremoniously made into the privacy of the little community.