REPTILES. 55 



paces, together with other equally marvellous details. Apart 

 from its scientific interest, therefore, this enormous Eastern 

 egg has another interest, as showing that some of the medi- 

 Eeval stories, long thought to be wholly mythical, had an 

 actual basis of fact. Colonel Yule, in his beautiful edition 

 of Marco Polo's travels, has suggested that the enormous 

 quill feathers of the rulch, said to have been brought from 

 Madagascar, were really leaf-stalks of the traveller's-tree 

 (see vol. ii. p. 3 5 4) ; but it is much more likely that they 

 were the immensely long mid-ribs of the leaves of the rqfia 

 palm. These are from twenty to thirty feet long, and are 

 not at all unlike an enormous quill stripped of the feathery 

 portion. 



It will be unnecessary to say much upon the remaining 

 classes of vertebrata, or upon the other divisions of animal 

 life found in Madagascar, not only because, with two or three 

 notable exceptions, they are less remarkable than the mammals 

 and birds, but also because several groups are yet imperfectly 

 known and their affinities still undetermined. 



Beptilia. — With regard to the Eeptiles, " these present some 

 very curious features, comparatively few of the African groups 

 being represented, while there are a considerable number of 

 Eastern, and even of American, forms." """ In the desert- 

 snakes, tree - snakes, and whip - snakes there are peculiar 

 genera, and the pythons or boas are also represented by a 

 genus peculiar to the island. But the most remarkable fact 

 in connection with this order of reptiles, so deadly in all the 

 great continents, is that, with two or three exceptions, the 

 serpents of Madagascar are harmless. Xo venomous snake is 

 known in the interior of the island or in the upper forests, 

 and it is not quite certain that the larger species found in 

 the warmer southern and western plains and on the coast 

 generally are deadly, although some are undoubtedly venomous. 

 In the open country and forests of the upper plateau the 

 snakes are all small and innocuous. A pretty kind of water- 

 snake may be often seen in the forest streams and pools, 

 swimming over the surface with its head gracefully held up 

 out of the water. One of my missionary brethren, the Eev. 



* Wallace, op. cit. 



