170 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES chap. 



rainy season. During the rainy season they are 

 perhaps not quite so exasperating, but my ex- 

 perience has been that they were both numerous and 

 troublesome at that season too. They are not so 

 active in cloudy weather as in bright sunshine, and 

 if a strong wind is blowing they hardly show them- 

 selves at all. 



It is perhaps worth mentioning that the fact of 

 the disappearance of the tse-tse fly from all countries 

 to the south of the Zambesi, very soon after the 

 complete extinction of buffaloes in the same regions, 

 cannot be attributed to the settling up and cultivation 

 of the land by Europeans ; for the tse-tse fly has 

 never existed in any part of Africa south of the 

 Zambesi where malarial fever was not and is not 

 still rife. Whatever may be the case to-day, up to 

 1896, long after the disappearance of both buffaloes 

 and tse-tse flies, the Boers had never been able to 

 establish themselves and live all the year round in 

 the Northern Transvaal along the valley of the 

 Limpopo, although they used to graze their cattle 

 there during the winter ; nor, as far as I am aware, 

 although mining operations have been carried on 

 for nearly twenty years within what was once 

 ** fly " country to the north of Hartley Hills in 

 Mashunaland, has there been any settlement of 

 families on the land in that district. 



The word '' tse-tse " (pronounced by the natives 

 '*tsay-tsay" and by colonists "tetsy") is simply 

 the word used by natives of the Bechwana clans for 

 the deadly fly known to scientists as Glossina 

 morsitans. The Matabele — as well, I believe, as 

 the Zulu — name for the same insect is " impugan." 

 With the Matabele any kind of fly is an *' impugan," 

 but it is the only word they ever employ for the 

 tse-tse. 



As is well known, the tse - tse fly, when with 

 its long proboscis it ** sticks," as the Boers say, a 



