478 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



dava, with a big busy market. It boasts of three or four general 

 stores run by white men, a hardware store, a lot of little Hindu shops, 

 a branch of the Comptoir d'Eseompte, a Messageries office, a garrison, 

 a Government hospital, and Government offices; but with it all, a 

 slack and sleepy town. Collecting here revealed a suburb of villas 

 of colonists, with gardens and hedges bordering roads on which was 

 much traffic. It was not till some three miles out of the town that the 

 well-kept farms gave place to the open country, and native villages 

 and plantations. 



On August 4th, Mr. Wulsin left Tulear by sea-canoe, large, able, 

 built-up dugouts, with high freeboard and great capacity. The 

 journey southward was along a desolate, sparsely inhabited coast. 

 The natives with their hair done up in rolls smeared with ox-fat, had 

 rounder faces and were more snub-nosed than the Sakalava. But 

 on the whole they were as good-looking and had as comfortable houses 

 as most of the western natives, outside the big centres. Owing to a 

 head-wind the party did not reach their objective, Lake Tsimanampet- 

 sotsa, till the 8th. The Lake is a long, narrow, brackish, shallow 

 sheet of water, on a mud-flat not far from the sea-coast. Here Mr. 

 Wulsin was not successful in collecting water-fowl, as he was unable to 

 get within range of the birds on the Lake, although shooting many in 

 the country' round about. The natives declared there were fish in the 

 Lake, but that they were unable to catch them. 



On his return to Tulear, Mr. Wulsin, after a few days collecting, 

 steamed up the west coast in the Bagdad, and disembarked at 

 Majunga, the seaport of the northwest province of Majunga, a town 

 somewhat smaller than Tamatave. From here he. proceeded by 

 small steamer and launch up the Betsiboka River to Maevatanana. 

 This is a provincial headquarters, well laid out with shaded roads 

 and good buildings. Here Hova influence was again evident; show- 

 ing itself in the comfortable two-story brick houses, that have re- 

 placed the native dwellings, in the well-dressed women in European 

 costume, and in the men clad in trousers and shirts. 



Two days by the weekly automobile service, through the eternal 

 "Mammelon" or hillocky country of the central plateau, brought 

 Mr. Wulsin back to Tananarive. 



His last expedition on the island was to Lake Alaotra, some distance 

 to the north. A branch railroad from Moramanga, on the line to 

 Tamatave, runs to Andaingo, some forty miles south of the Lake. 

 Here he slept in an empty freight car, by way of hotel accommodation. 

 The population on the way to the Lake was a great contrast to that 



