BETSILEO ART. 263 



are made for cooking the beef eaten at the New Year's festival. 

 These vessels are circular, and somewhat flattened, and are 

 frequently ornamented with a series of lines and zigzags, very 

 closely resembling those on the early fictile productions of 

 the Germanic races. 



BitsiUo Art. — Having for many years seen little of any 

 Malagasy tribe except the Hovas, and having often wondered 

 at the almost entire absence of decorative carving amongst 

 them, I was greatly interested when taking a journey in 1 876 

 into the southern central province of Beteileo to find, very 

 soon after leaving the territory of the Hovas, that their 

 neighbours to the south employ carving very abundantly, both 

 in their houses and their burial memorials. There is among 

 these Betsileo people a decided and special style of ornament, 

 used not only in their dwellings and tombs, but also in many 

 of their household utensils, as spoons, gourds, dishes, &c. ; and 

 a kind of tattooing is also very common among them, in which 

 personal adornment some of the same ornamental details are 

 also introduced. 



I first noticed something new in the tombs in the tract 

 of country between Isandrandahy and Ambositra (about four 

 days' journey south of Antananarivo). Within two or three 

 hours' journey of the latter place, I observed that the upright 

 stones placed near the graves were not the rough undressed 

 blocks or slabs common in Imerina, but were finely dressed 

 and squared, and ornamented with carving. During my stay 

 at Ambositra, I walked to the top of the rising ground on the 

 western slope of which the village is principally built. Here 

 there is an old ambntana tree, and a memorial to one of the 

 early kings of the Betsileb. It is a piece of timber seven or 

 eight inches square and about ten feet high, having pieces of 

 wood projecting from a little below the top so as to form a kind 

 of stage. Each face of the timber is elaborately carved with 

 different patterns arranged in squares. Some of these are 

 concentric circles, a large one in the centre, with smaller ones 

 filling up the angles ; others have a circle with a number of 

 little bosses in them ; others have a kind of leaf ornament ; 

 and in others parallel lines are arranged in different directions. 

 The narrow spaces dividing these squares from each other 



