200 BIRD LIFE 



the present comparatively small sheet of water as its 

 representative. 



To an ordinary observer the Alaotra lake presents a good 

 deal of bird life, as well as the large reptiles which bask in the 

 sun on its shores. But to those who will examine more closely 

 and will use a good microscope, there are minute forms of life, 

 both animal and vegetable, which are wonderful for their 

 beauty and their variety. Among the latter are the Algae, of 

 which my late friend, Mr Baron, made a collection, mostly from 

 the neighbourhood of Alaotra, including a hundred and eighty 

 species, of which seventy proved to be new to science. In a 

 quarto pamphlet of fifty pages, with plates of two hundred 

 different figures, these fresh-water algae were minutely de- 

 scribed, as belonging to thirteen different orders and thirty-one 

 genera. 2 Many new and interesting species were thus revealed, 

 and considerable additional knowledge of the distribution of 

 known forms attained. Without actual inspection of the 

 plates it is difficult to give any clear notion of the various 

 remarkable, often strange, and frequently beautiful forms of 

 these lowly organised plants as revealed by the microscope. 

 The bi-lobed outlines of the Cosmaria are especially noticeable, 

 and hardly less so are the stellate, triangular and multangular 

 forms of other species. It is difficult to believe that some of 

 these remarkable organisms are plants at all ; in many cases 

 they are more like some beautiful shell, delicately and elabor- 

 ately sculptured ; while in others they take the form of a 

 simple cell round, oval or triangular often as if about to 

 increase by fissure ; while others again have curious processes, 

 more like those of some grotesque polyp than anything belonging 

 to the vegetable kingdom. These plants are additional illustra- 

 tions of the wonders that lie hidden from ordinary observation 

 in the mud of almost every pond and in the slime that gathers 

 round almost every water-plant. 



It is a rather interesting fact that the crocodile found in the 

 Alaotra is a different species to that inhabiting all the rivers 

 of Madagascar ; but it is identical with the crocodile found 

 fossil, together with the remains of the extinct hippopotamus 

 and the gigantic birds and lemurs which inhabited the island 

 probably until the appearance of man upon the scene. These 

 reptiles are very numerous in the lake, for in the afternoons, on 



