A NIGHT IN THE FOREST 171 



infinitely varied and beautiful forms of vegetable and animal 

 life that are around him. The tall trees of innumerable species, 

 in fierce competition with their neighbours, rearing their great 

 trunks heavenwards that they may spread out their foliage, 

 and open their blossoms in the light above, the fantastic foldings 

 and twistings of the snake-like lianas, the countless shapes and 

 tints of the leaves, the bright colours of some brilliant beetle, the 

 delicately traced wing design of some happy butterfly, the 

 merry chirping of some gaily adorned bird, the hurried steps 

 of the busy little ants, the languid movements of a chameleon, 

 with its strange skin and stranger eyes, the patient watching 

 for prey of a red three-cornered spider, the tiny mosses and 

 delicate ferns nestling snugly among their big brothers under the 

 rocks all these and a thousand other objects of interest and 

 beauty help one to forget the exertion and the toil caused by 

 the difficulties of the road, and make one feel that it is with a 

 lavish and artistic hand that their great Maker has formed and 

 bedecked them all. Moreover, there is in travelling in the 

 forest a strange and fascinating illusion, a vague feeling of 

 expectancy, which persistently recurs, in spite of disappoint- 

 ment, that somewhere on in front something of exceptional 

 interest will be found." 



I have of course, during many journeys in Madagascar, spent 

 many a night in small villages surrounded by forest, but I have 

 not had quite the experiences described by Mr Baron in another 

 passage which I shall venture to quote. Mr Baron says : 



*' To spend a night in the forest is an experience worth having. 

 Bivouacked in some open glade, through which a small stream 

 creeps lazily along, with a warm cheering fire to keep off the dew 

 and chill of the night, one gains a quite different knowledge of 

 the forest from that which one gets in the daytime, for all 

 nature is not asleep even in the midnight hour. Just as dark- 

 ness is setting in the fireflies with their tiny lanterns flit about 

 among the bushes ; and the cicada, of various species, perched 

 on the trunks of trees, commence their strange song. They are 

 small in size, but certainly they make a big din. Well may the 

 Malagasy proverb say : ' Don't be like the cicada, whose voice 

 fills the whole valley, though the creature itself is but a mouth- 

 ful.' The sound it makes is not a buzz-z exactly, and it is not 

 a hum-m-m. It is a deafening, unceasing, rasping, irritating 



