128 BOTANISING IN MADAGASCAR 



" 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, re- 

 markable 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 Chlaen- 

 aceae ; 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 experi- 

 ences as a collector of plants : 



" 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 



