oncerned in its growing trade, Madagascar is still very vaguely
known to the majority of English people; and, as was lately remarked by
a daily journal, its name has until recently been almost as much a mere
geographical expression as that of Mesopotamia. The island has, however,
certain very interesting features in its scientific aspects, and
especially in some religious and social problems which have been worked
out by its people during the past fifty years; and these may be briefly
described before proceeding to discuss the principal subject of this
article.

Looking sideways at a map of the Southern Indian Ocean, Madagascar
appears to rise like a huge sea monster out of the waters. The island
has a remarkably compact and regular outline; for many hundred miles its
eastern shore is almost a straight line, but on its north-western side
it is indented by a number of deep land-locked gulfs, which include some
of the finest harbours in the world. About a third of its interior to
the north and east is occupied by an elevated mountainous region, raised
from 3,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea, and consisting of Primary
rocks--granite, gneiss, and basalt--probably very ancient land, and
forming during the Secondary geological epoch an island much smaller
than the Madagascar of to-day. While our Oolitic and Chalk rocks were
being slowly laid down under northern seas, the extensive coast plains
of the island, especially on its western and southern sides, were again
and again under water, and are still raised but a few hundred feet above
the sea-level. From south-east to north and north-west there extends a
band of extinct volcanoes, connected probably with the old craters of
the Comoro Group, where, in Great Comoro, the subterranean forces are
still active. All round the island runs a girdle of dense forest,
varying from ten to forty miles in width, and containing fine timber and
valuable gums and other vegetable wealth--a paradise for botanists,
where rare orchids, the graceful traveller's-tree, the delicate
lattice-leaf plant, the gorgeous flamboyant, and many other elsewhere
unknown forms of life abound, and where doubtless much still awaits
fuller research.

While the flora of Madagascar is remarkably abundant, its fauna is
strangely limited, and contains none of the various and plentiful forms
of mammalian life which make Southern and Central Africa the paradise of
sportsmen. The ancient land of the island has preserved a