344 REV. GEORGE A. SHAW, F.Z.S., ON 
haul, is divided equally among the eight, as the services of 
the steersman and baler-out cannot be dispensed with to 
allow of their fishing. The one must keep the head of the 
craft to the seas, and unless the other continues his employ- 
ment a catastrophe would result. 
On the extensive prairie land large herds of cattle are 
kept. These are not, on the average, so good or so large as 
those in the interior, probably owing to the less nourishing 
nature of the grass, which is ranker on the coast; and cattle 
from the interior invariably lose flesh after a short stay on 
these plains. Sheep and goats do not thrive in the Mati- 
tinana district, and pigs are fady (tabooed), ‘he Taimoro 
will neither keep pigs nor eat pork, unlike in one respect the 
Taifasy and other south-east tribes, who, though making it 
fady to keep pigs, do not object’to buying pork in the market 
and eating it, provided some one else has kept the pig, and 
killed and prepared it for sale. 
Although the Taimoro do not reach the great forest to the 
west of their territory, there are several by no means insigni- 
ficant forest tracts within the limits of their district, contain- 
ing many valuable woods: rosewood, ebony, a species of 
teak (hintsy), and other hard building timber, besides the 
nato, a ved dye-wood, and the rofia palm; but no india- 
rubber is now found in the forests of the Matitanana. 
There are indications that iron, and perhaps other metals, 
are to be found in this part of the island, but none are 
worked. All the iron used by these people is brought 
already smelted and, generally speaking, manufactured into 
spades, knives, hatchets, etc., from Betsileo, where a great 
number of the people make a good living by working iron for 
the Taimoro market. The country is in places covered with 
voleanic rock, large quantities of lava protruding from the 
surface, or lying in boulder-like masses on the hill-sides. No 
gold has been found, although once or twice I have heard 
rumours of its existence in some of the rivers; but these have 
turned out to be incorrect. 
Trading-posts have for many years been in existence on 
this coast ; but, like the greater part of the coast-line on the 
east jof Madagascar, it is wanting in harbours. ‘The rivers 
are all entirely or partially blocked up with sand, and 
vessels are obliged to anchor at a considerable distance from 
land and work their cargo by decked lighters, which bring 
the goods through the surf to the beach, where they are 
landed by hand and carried up to the traders’ warehouses. 
