The Mkodos and the Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar

On the island of Madagascar, off the southeast coast of Africa, live a race of people called the Mkodos; they are one of the smallest races in the world, the men seldom exceeding fifty-six inches in height. Their religion consists solely in the awful worship of their sacred tree, the Crinoida Dajeeana. The tree is most peculiar in its appearance and nature; its trunk is somewhat like a pineapple in shape, and when full-grown about eight feet high; from the top (which is at least two feet in diameter) hang down eight leaves, eleven or twelve feet long, two feet through in their thickest part, and tapering from a width of three feet to a sharp point; they are very convex on the under, and concave on the upper side; the concave side is thickly set with strong horny hooks. The top of the trunk is in shape like a smaller plate set within a larger one, and this plate is filled with a sweet liquid, which, when tasted, produces delirium and sleep. From under the rim of the lower plate a series of great green tendrils from seven to eight feet long stretch out stiffly towards the horizon, while above these, six long white palpi (thin as reeds and frail as quills apparently) rear themselves towards the sky, twirling and twisting with incessant motion. The tree and the worship of it were discovered by Karl Leche, who wrote to Dr. Omelius Friedlowsky this description, which was immediately published in the Carlsruhe scientific journal. The mode of sacrifice as witnessed on one occasion was as follows: The natives had been shrieking around the tree and chanting propitiatory hymns to the great tree devil. With still wilder shrieks they now surrounded one of the women and goaded her on with the points of their javelins until she mounted the trunk and drank of the fluid in the plate, rising instantly again with wild frenzy in her face. But she did not jump down as she seemed to intend to do, oh no ! The atrocious cannibal tree that had been so inert and dead came to sudden savage life. The slender delicate palpi quivered a moment over her head, then coiled round and round her neck and arms; the green tendrils wrapped her about in fold after fold ever tightening; then the great leaves rose slowly and stiffly, approached one another, and closed about the dead victim with the force of a hydraulic press. As the bases of the leaves pressed more tightly together, from between them there trickled down the trunk of the tree great streams of the fluid mingled with the blood and oozing viscera of the victim. The savages bounded forward, and with cups, leaves, hands, and tongues, got each enough of the liquor to set him mad and frantic. The tree remained unchanged in appearance during ten days, and at the end of that time the leaves, the tendrils and the palpi had all regained their natural position, and nothing but the skull of the victim remained as a proof of the sacrifice which had taken place there. Another witness of a sacrifice to the Crinoida Dajeeana says that when the tree had completely enveloped the woman, the natives set fire to it, and it became her funeral pyre.

If the story of this wonderful tree is even half true, we must be more than ever convinced how little we can as yet read nature's infinite book of secrecy.