CHAPTER V 
FLORA AND FAUNA 
The isolation of the great island, which has lasted for 
long geological periods of time, has had a far-reaching 
influence on the forms of its oro^anic life. This has taken 
its own course in its further development, in accordance 
with that tendency to change which is possessed by all 
living beings. From this point of view the plants and 
animals of Madagascar are especially remarkable, and 
the island is uncommonly rich in strongly specialized 
forms, indigenous only to this region. The animals, for 
example, are so peculiar and so different from those of 
Africa and Asia, that Madagascar might well be treated 
as forming a zoological region of its own. 
There exist certain points of agreement with Africa 
and also with Southern Asia, which are intelligible on 
geological grounds, for the island was still in connection 
with both these regions until the Tertiary period. 
Let us first describe the plants. This subject has been 
thoroughly worked out by Grandidier and Baillon together, 
so that we are acquainted with some 2500 species of 
plants found in Madagascar. The conditions of the island 
are not everywhere equally favourable to vegetation; 
there are, as we know, in the south, on the west coast 
and in the extreme north, barren tracts of a wretched 
character, but where, as on the eastern slope and on 
the belt of land along the coast on the eastern side, 
there is a superabundance of moisture combined with 
an extremely fertile soil, a covering of vegetation is 
developed which can hardly be surpassed in magnificence 
