Although the vegetation was most luxuriant, I was surprised by the almost perfect silence of the woods #QotD

Although the vegetation was most luxuriant, I was surprised by the almost perfect silence of the woods, and the extreme rarity of animal life. Except an occasional note from a bird, and sometimes the wild melancholy cries of the lemurs, there was a deathlike silence, unbroken even by the hum of insects. (p.93)

From Madagascar and its people. Notes of four years' residence by James Sibree (1870)