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eighteen to twenty feet wide, and about fifteen or sixteen feet 

 high. This had all been deposited by the spring, which kept 

 open a passage through the lime to the top. Some years ago, 

 however, the spring was tapped by a shaft, of no great depth, a 

 few yards to the north, over which a large and commodious 

 bath-house was erected by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission ; 

 and here many visitors came to bathe in the hot mineral water, 

 which has been found very beneficial in rheumatic and other 

 complaints. 1 A little distance to the south-west is another 

 spring, not, however, hot, but only milk-warm, the water of 

 which is drunk by those who bathe in the other spring. This 

 water has been shown to be, in chemical constituents, almost 

 identical with the famous Vichy water of France. All over the 

 valley the water oozes up in various places ; and about half -a - 

 mile farther north are several other springs, somewhat hotter 

 than that just described, to which the natives largely resort 

 for curative bathing. 



During the excavations for the foundations of the bath-house, 

 the skeletons of several examples of an extinct species of 

 hippopotamus were discovered, the crania and tusks being in 

 very perfect preservation. Some of these are now in the 

 museum at Berlin ; the finest specimen was sent to the museum 

 of the University of Christiania in Norway. This Madagascar 

 hippopotamus was a smaller species than that now living in 

 Africa, and is probably nearly allied to, if not identical with, 

 another hippopotamus (H. Lemerlei), of which remains were 

 found in 1868 by M. Grandidier, in the plains of the south-west 

 coast. I was informed by the people that, wherever in these 

 valleys the black mud is dug into for a depth of three or four feet, 

 bones are sure to be met with. From the internal structure 

 of the teeth and bones of the hippopotami discovered at Ant- 

 sirabe, traces of the gelatine being still visible, it is evident that 

 the animals had been living at a comparatively recent period. 

 There have been occasional vague reports of the existence of 

 some large animal in the southern parts of the island ; and 

 perhaps the half -mythical stories of the Sdngomby, Tokandia, 

 Lalomena, and other strange creatures current among the 

 Malagasy, are traditions of the period when these pachyderms 

 were still to be seen in the lakes and streams and marshes of 

 Madagascar. 



