228 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
Mr. Schwarz read and commented upon portions of a letter by 
Henry Stanley, the famous explorer of Africa, and furnished the 
following abstract of his remarks : 
POISONOUS INSECTS IN CENTRAL AFRICA. Mr. Henry Stanley's first 
letters on the progress of the Emin Pasha relief expedition have been ex- 
tensively quoted in scientific journals and newspapers; but one of his 
later letters, dated September i, 1888, and addressed to the Secretary of the 
Royal Geographical Society of England, where it was read at the April, 
1889, meeting, is less generally known; at least I have not seen a full 
copy in the more accessible literature, and I may be allowed to quote here- 
with (in re-translation from " Das Ausland," 1889, p. 352) a passage which 
has some connection with entomology. The incident referred to iby 
Stanley occurred during his memorable march through the immense equa- 
torial forest along the Aruwimi River, between the Congo and the Albert 
Nyanza. Of this dense and nearly impassable forest Stanley gives a most 
gloomy account ; but it seems by no means to be destitute of insect life, 
for he says : " PVom July 5th till the middle of October the expedition 
moved along the banks of the river. * * * What a country for flies, 
bugs, and butterflies! While I write this the butterflies are in swarms 
about me, and flap with their wings in confirmation of my assertion. 
Large clouds of butterflies are daily for hours sailing up stream and across 
the same." 
A little further on he says : " In Avisibba the natives attacked our 
camp in a most determinate way. They thought that with their large 
provision of poisoned arrows they had the advantage of us, for as long as 
the poison is fresh it is most fatal. Lieutenant Stairs and five of our men 
were wounded by these arrows. Mr. Stairs' Avound was from an arrow 
the poison of which was dry, and therefore several d"ays old. He recuper- 
ated only after three weeks' suffering; but the wound did not heal for 
several months. One man received a very light wound on the head and 
died five days later of lockjaw; another received a wound in the muscles 
of the upper arm near the shoulder, and died about six hours after the 
first man, also of lockjaw. Another, slightly wounded on the throat, died 
on the seventh day, and one wounded in the side, as I believe, died during 
the following night. All wounded men died of lockjaw. 
"We were of course very anxious to learn where this deadly poison is 
obtained from. On our return from the Albert Nyanza we stopped in 
Avisibba, and \vhile looking through the huts of the natives we found sev- 
eral packages of dried red ants or pismires, and only then we were in- 
formed that the finely-powdered dried bodies of these insects, when boiled 
in palm oil, constitute the deadly poison by which we lost so many brave 
men after such terrible sufferings. 
" Now we wondered why we could have been ignorant so long regarding 
the nature of this poison, for we could have prepared all sorts of poisons 
from the many insects we had seen; for example, the big black ant, the 
