482 Journal of Agnciilturc. [10 Aug., 1908. 



I obtained a great deal of valuable information from the officers and the 

 examination of the collections in their charge. 



I visited the Zoological Museum at Cambridge University, where Dr. 

 David Sharp is in charge, and spent a day going through the collections 

 which contain many Australian specimens, and noting the methods adopted 

 in the mounting and preservation of the museum specimens. Later on, 

 T visited Oxford University. Here are deposited the very extensive Hope 

 and Westwood collections containing the t\pes of many Australian insects 

 of economic importance, among them a collection of scale insects, probably 

 the first made of these obscure and then little known insect pests. The 

 collection of Diptera contained manv specimens of fruit iiies, some of 

 great interest, such as several of Mediterranean fruit flies captured in 

 London, and noted in Westwood 's handwriting in 1840. At the invitation 

 of Mr. G. H. Verrall, of Sussex Lodge, Newmarket, who has the Bigot 

 and Meigen collections of Diptera in his great collection, I spent two days 

 at his place examining these collections, where also there are many Australian 

 types, and established the habitat of a number of Dacus and other fruit 

 flies in Cairo, India, Africa and the Malay Islands, and found specimens 

 of Ceratitis catoirei, closely allied to C. capkata species, but I think is a 

 distinct species; it is onlv recorded from Mauritius and the Island of 

 Bourbon. 



At the invitation of the Hon. C. N. Rothschild (who is the greatest 

 authority on that important group of insects — the Fleas), I spent a verv 

 interesting day with the Director (Dr. Jordan) at the Tring Museum at 

 Tring Park, one of, if not the finest private collection^ of natural history 

 specimens in the world. As you are aware, the bubonic plague and, it 

 is suspected, even leprosy, has been spread to man by fleas, so that much 

 attention hap been paid the last few years to these insects. 



I visited the Tropical School of Medicine attached to the Liverpool 

 University, where Mr. Robert Newstead, the leading economic authority 

 in England, has charge of the entomological work, and where the identifica- 

 tion of all the insects and their parasites which have been found or are 

 suspected of spreading tropical diseases, such as malaria, yellow fever, 

 and " sleeping sickness " are collected and preserved. At the present time 

 this school, which has made such wonderful discoveries in the advancement 

 of medical entomology, has three expeditions in the field — two in Egypt 

 and Central Africa, and the third in Brazil. The institution is well 

 supported by the merchants of Liverpool, and at the present time they 

 are subscribing funds to establish a Professorship of Entomologv in con- 

 nexion with the University. The damage to trade in Central Africa 

 caused by " sleeping sickness " can hardlv be estimated ; the presence of 

 the Blood Sucking Fly {Glossina nobilis) — <:losely related to the much 

 better known Tsetse Fly of more Southern Africa — has altered the whole 

 trade relations of a vast territory, and is spreading everv year. This fly 

 by biting man introduces an organism known as Trvpanosoma into the 

 blood and causes the death of infected persons. Just after I left London 

 an International Sleeping Sickness Conference was held in London, where 

 scientific men from Germany, Belgium, France and England met. An 

 idea of the ravages wrought bv the disease will be gathered on reading the 

 foHowing extract from an African newspaper issued last month :— 



It is hardly seven vears ago since the terrible and at present incurable malady 

 known as Trypanosomiosis or Sleeping Sickness first mfvde its way into Uganda 

 from the Congo basin. In a few months it spread with terrible rapidity, and 

 within a year of its appearance over 20,000 people died in the single district of 



