214 VEGETABLE FIBRES USED FOR DRESS. 



others), that the peoples of Madagascar have never had 

 much connection with the African races. These latter, as is 

 well known, make large use of the skins of a great number 

 of the animals, both wild and domesticated, found in Africa, 

 under the name of Jcarosses ; while the Malagasy, as far as 

 is known, never make the least use of such material, except 

 that very occasionally a cap made of the round hump of the 

 cattle may be seen. It is quite true that wild animals are 

 much fewer in Madagascar than in Africa ; but, on the other 

 hand, the herds of fine cattle are numerous, and sheep are 

 also plentiful, but their skins are never used as articles of 

 dress. 



This is the more remarkable, inasmuch as during two or 

 three months in the year there is a decided need for warm 

 clothing in the cool highlands of the interior provinces of 

 I marina and B(5tsileo ; and it has often occurred to me, as 

 I have seen the people shivering in the chilly morning air of 

 the winter months, with nothing on but a thin cotton or hemp 

 lamba, that in this unaltering conservative habit of dress 

 there is certain evidence that the Hovas and other inland 

 tribes were originally inhabitants of a warmer region where 

 thick clothing was never needed. For centuries they have 

 been living in the cool elevated plateaux of the interior, from 

 3000 to 5000 feet above the sea, where warm clothing is a 

 necessity to Europeans in the cold season, and yet, with the 

 unchanging habits of a semi-barbarous people, they go on 

 without any change from the light covering that was sufficient 

 for their ancestors when they dwelt in the warm maritime 

 plains, or, previously to that, in the sunny isles of a 

 tropical ocean. Thousands of animals are killed every year 

 whose skins in Africa would be all used as cloaks and cover- 

 ings, and yet it seems never to have occurred to the Malagasy 

 to employ them for such a purpose. Of course the above 

 remarks as to the non-use of thick clothing apply chiefly to 

 the mass of the poorer people ; the upper and wealthier 

 classes see the advantage as well as the comfort of warm 

 dress in the winter months, and even the poor are beginning 

 to use flannel and other thicker fabrics for themselves and 

 for their children. A large amount of infant mortality has, 



