Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/535

 FAUNA OP MADAGASCAR. 487 on essentially orij^inal fauna. Thus half of the insular species consists of lemurians, niukis, and others, which are distinguished hy their habits, resembling those of Hquirrels, their long tails, their enormous hands, their piercing cries and shrieks, like those of human beings ; and lastly, their way of bounding along like kangaroos. There is a propithccan, a member of the indris family, which when closely pursued by the hunter can clear thirty-two or thirty-three feet at a single spring. Thanks to its branchial membrane, forming a kind of parachute or hut's wing, it seems rather to fly than to jump from tree to tree (Grandidier). All these species, each of which occupies a well-defined range, are easily tamed, and one of them, the babakoto {lichnuotm Incirm), is even trained to catch birds, like the hawks and falcons of medioDval times.* The aye-aye {chciromyH), best known of all these lemurians, remains dormant throughout the dry season, and builds itself a real nest ; while the catta inhabits rocky districts. The tendreks {tanrecs), or centetes, another family of mammals allied to our hedgehogs, and who sleep through the summer, are represented by several species whose congeners are found nowhere else nearer than Cuba and Haiti in the West Indies. The pint mla, or cryptoprocta ferox, a feline unknown elsewhere, and a few civet cats, are the only carnivorous mammals in the island, whose fauna also includes some rats, mice, and the potamochoerus larraius, or " masked " water-hog. The oxen and wild dogs often met in the forests or on the grassy steppes appear to be the descendants of domestic animals which have reverted to the savage state, and some naturalists include a species of cat in the same category. The European rats, which accompany the Western peoples in all their migrations, have also alr*>ady invaded Madagascar. More than half the species of birds are entirely peculiar to the great island, in their general physiognomy resembling the Malaj-an much more than the African forms. Till recent times — that is to say, within, perhaps, the last two or three centuries — there still survived the wpyornis maxinius, a gigantic member of the ostrich family, which was known to the Arab travellers of the Middle Ages, and which figures in some of the marvellous tales of the " Thousand and One Nights." This is the legendary roc, or griffon of Marco Polo, which was said to seize elephants in its talons and carry them off to the summits of lofty mountains. Some of the eggs of the acpyornis have besn found embedded in the alluvial soil und elsewhere, the largest of which, measuring nearly thirteen inches in length, was calculated to have a capacity of ten quarts and an eighth, or about as much ns six eggs of the ostrich, sixteen of the cassowary, and a hundred and forty- eight of the common hen. From the dimensions of the bones it is supposed that this gigantic bird must have been at least double the size of the largest ostrich. Grandidier, who first discovered the remains of the ODpyornis, has also brought to light the skeletons of a huge turtle and of a variety of the hippopotamus. The crocodile of Madagascar, which swarms in the rivers on both slopes of the island, appears to constitute an independent species, as does also a gigantic boa constrictor, which, according to the local legends, formerly attacked both men and cattle.
 * Hartmann, Madagatcar und die ItuelH SeyehelUn.