338 Mr. E. Newton on the Land-Birds 



Plantes. In the well-arranged museum in the garden there is 

 probably the best collection in the world of Madagascar birds ; 

 but of those from the neighbouring islands it is, like our museum 

 at Mauritius, lamentably deficient. Amongst the collection of 

 Reunion birds I was surprised to see what I believed to be Ardea 

 schistacea, a species not noticed in Mauritius, and which, M. 

 Lantz assured me, was far from uncommon both in Reunion and 

 in Madagascar ; he had also a living bird, which he consigned to 

 the care of M. Louis Berthelin, Agent de FAdministration des 

 Postes, a zealous collector for the Societe d'Acclimatation of 

 Marseilles, who was a passenger on board the * Erairne.^ 



We left St. Denis the same afternoon, and, after a voyage of 

 continuously fine weather and without event, we sighted Sey- 

 chelles at daybreak on the morning of the 24th. Mahe was on 

 our port bow, while Fregate, Ladigue, and Praslin were on the 

 starboard. Mahe as we approached it was beautiful — the out- 

 line rough and broken, the highest peaks hidden in mists, the 

 mountains rising up almost immediately from the sea, leaving 

 scarcely any flat ground at their bases. The coast is entirely 

 fringed with verdant groves of cocoanut-trees, which in some 

 places extend far up the slopes and valleys of the mountains ; the 

 trees being planted in regular rows up the incline, present from 

 a distance the appearance of a vast beet-root garden. In other 

 places may be seen scanty patches of cultivation, such as maize, 

 rice, or sweet potatoes, or tracts of grass dotted here and there 

 with clumps of shrubs, the land remaining altogether useless and 

 unprofitable. But few houses are seen, as they are generally 

 effectually screened from view by trees. These slopes rise to the 

 height of 700 or 800 feet, and generally above them is a strip 

 of natural bush or forest, the dead whitened stems of the Capucin 

 tree standing prominently over the others. Then comes a per- 

 pendicular wall of granite, some 300 or 400 feet high, then a 

 terrace with another strip of forest and another wall, and, last 

 of all, forest on the top of the ridge. At two or three places on 

 this side of the island broad spaces of red earth on the sides of 

 the hills marked the sites of the landslips which occurred during 

 the hurricane of October 1862, and which are still uncovered 

 by vegetation. 



