USEFUL PLANTS. 95 



felt for some miimtes at the Lack of the mouth and in the 

 throat. 



Among the jjlants which are useful in Madagascar for other 

 purposes besides food must be reckoned the' gourds. These 

 are found in great variety of shape and size, and are used 

 instead of bottles, and for storing all kinds of liquids. A 

 rude kind of guitar or banjo, called lokdnga, is also made with 

 a gourd ; a long piece of wood with three or four strings is 

 fixed to a gourd of a flat shape so as to give the resonance 

 required ; but the music produced is not of a very high 

 order. 



Tobacco is grown in considerable quantities by the Mala- 

 gasy. It has not, however, been used for smoking until very 

 recently, the native use of the fragrant weed being to take it 

 in the form of snuff; and this again is not applied, as in 

 most countries, to the nostrils, but is tossed by a dexterous 

 jerk of the hand into the mouth, where it is retained for 

 a few minutes under the tongue. This snuff is carried 

 about in a beautifully - polished piece of hollow cane or 

 bamboo. Hemp {rongdny) is also occasionally smoked by 

 some of the more dissolute portion of the people, but its use 

 is illegal. 



Par its more legitimate uses, however, hemp is grown to 

 some extent, and is woven by the women into a coarse strong 

 cloth for lambas, the national article of dress. Cotton is 

 also cultivated, and a great variety of beautiful cloths are 

 manufactured from it. The most favourite kinds are made 

 in stripes with richly ornamented borders, in which silk is 

 introduced. 



Many of the dyes are procured from vegetable substances, 

 the reddish brown used as the groundwork of many lambas 

 being obtained from the bark of a large forest tree called 

 ndto. Another vegetable dye, which is of some commercial 

 importance, is the orscille, a lichen which forms the principal 

 product of the sterile country at the south-west corner of the 

 island, and grows in abundance on the bark of the spiny 

 shrubs which are the characteristic vegetation of that region. 

 Indigo, called in the native language aika, is cultivated by 

 the Malagasy, and might probably, by the application of 



