IX TSE-TSE FLY IN THE TRANSVAAL 151 



the whole of Africa to the south of the Zambesi, 

 where not only would it seem that these insects 

 live entirely upon mammalian blood, but that they 

 have become so highly specialised that they can 

 only maintain their vitality on the blood of 

 buffaloes ; for it can be shown that wherever tse- 

 tse flies were first encountered by the earliest 

 European travellers in South Africa, there also 

 buffaloes were either constantly present or visited 

 such districts during certain months of every year ; 

 and that as soon as the buffaloes were either 

 exterminated or driven out of any such territories, 

 a remarkable diminution in the numbers of the 

 tse-tse flies was at once observed ; whilst in a 

 very few years after the complete extinction of 

 the buffaloes these insects entirely ceased to exist, 

 even though other kinds of game remained in the 

 country for years afterwards. A few facts bearing 

 on this subject, which, being historical, can neither 

 be questioned nor, I think, explained away as 

 coincidences, are well worth enumerating. 



In 1845 Mr- William Cotton Oswell — the well- 

 known traveller and hunter — encountered tse-tse 

 fly on the Maghaliquain river, a tributary of the 

 Limpopo running through the Northern Transvaal, 

 and it is an historical fact that at that time the 

 whole of the Northern Transvaal lying between 

 the Waterberg and Zoutpansberg ranges and the 

 Limpopo, as well as a large area of country lying 

 to the north of that river, was the haunt of great 

 herds of buffaloes, and that the banks of every 

 river draining this large territory, as w^ll as 

 many tracts of forest lying between these rivers, 

 were at the same time infested with tse-tse flies. 



In 1 87 1 the well-known traveller Mr. Thomas 

 Baines, as he has recorded in his book The 

 Gold Regions of South- East Africa, still found 

 the tse-tse fly numerous on the Maghaliquain 



