250 REV. R. BARON ON THE 
prefer, or are obliged, to make these timber barricades, though 
the forest may be miles away, and though the trees have to be 
dragged along the ground or carried on men's shoulders, involving 
indeseribable labour, hardship, and loss of time, and forming a 
much ess impregnable and permanent barricade when finished 
than would be the ease if the other materials were employed. 
All this seems to a European the very essence of waste and folly. 
But as though the timber was absolutely of no value, I once saw 
a road which had been cut through the forest for a long distance, 
for no other purpose than to allow passage for the dragging of a 
tombstone which had been quarried in the neighbourhood. To 
make this road no fewer than 25,000 trees had been cut down! 
Again, in getting planks for building purposes from the forests, 
there is most extravagant waste of timber. A tree is felled, and 
the native woodmen, not having saws, set to work with their 
hatchets on each side of it until the timber is reduced to the 
required thickness, and thus each tree, however large, supplies 
but a single plank. It is truly lamentable to see how the forests, 
containing, as they do, fine valuable timber, are, in these and 
other ways, being consigned to destruction. The laws of the 
country forbid the people to burn or otherwise destroy them ; but 
these laws have been hitherto practically a dead letter, and con- 
sequently the area covered by trees is being rapidly reduced year 
by year. Happily there seems to be now, on the part of the 
Malagasy Government, a growing consciousness of the immense 
value of the extensive forests of the island, and,let us hope, a 
growing determination also to stop the fearful havoc at present 
going on. 
There are now known in Madagascar, as has been already 
stated, about 4100 species of plants, and although there is still a 
considerable number of novelties in every fresh collection sent 
from the island, the pereentage of such is rapidly diminishing, 
and I think it may with certainty be said that the great bulk of 
Madagascarian plants have already been gathered*, so that we 
* In the Kew ‘Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information’ for May, 1888, it is 
stated that “ the flora of the lowlands of Madagascar is very imperfectly known 
atpresent........ Mr. J. G. Baker, Principal Assistant in the Kew Herbarium, 
has for many years devoted attention to the flora of the mountainous parts of 
Madagascar.” This is only partially true. I am convinced that nearly all the 
vegetable forms found on the east coast of the island, and, at any rate, the ma- 
jority of those found on the west coast, are now known to science. The flora of 
