MADAGASCAR (II) 173 
their amazing cries—even of a single animal—sounding much 
like a dog-fight. 
The wailing cry of the indris I often heard: this creature and 
the aye-aye are two of Madagascar’s most interesting mammals. 
Both are fady, in local parlance, which means that their capture, 
dead or alive, is taboo. The indris is the largest of all the lemurs, 
progresses in an upright position, and is almost tailless. It is 
mainly velvety-black on the upper parts, with a curious triangular 
white or yellowish-white patch on the lower back. I once stalked 
in thick forest an isolated specimen that was making his custom- 
ary sad wail—a sound that carries an amazing distance—and 
found him seated on the ground. He soon spotted me and made 
off, not by making for the tree-tops as would a monkey or one 
of the true lemurs, and not along the ground as would a baboon, 
but by leaping from trunk to trunk below the level of the branches 
in the manner of a tree-kangaroo. 
According to Malagasy tradition, long ago a native woman was 
guilty of unfaithfulness and for her indiscretion was changed into 
a lemur. It was only natural that she should be larger than the 
other lemurs, have practically no tail and walk upright—in fact 
she became the first indris. It follows that she took her customs 
with her, and so even today the indris is supposed to practice 
midwifery, and when one is about to have a baby her friends 
gather round and massage her with certain leaves. When born the 
baby is subjected to a test to see if it is lucky—formerly a common 
practice among the Malagasy themselves—and is thrown from a 
tree-top into the air. If it manages to cling to a branch on descend- 
ing it is lucky, but if it fails it is considered unlucky and better 
out of the way. 
In the eastern forest I came across many native lemur traps, 
although, theroetically, these animals are strictly protected. In 
favorable places narrow channels are cut through the forest so that 
any lemurs traveling across them are unable to do so by the usual 
method of springing from branch to branch. The true forest-dwell- 
ing lemurs do not like descending to the ground if they can avoid 
it, and so advantage is taken of this by placing here and there a long 
pole horizontally between the trees about five feet from the ground 
so that it bridges the gap. In the center of this is fixed a native 
