iv First Report on Economic Zoology. 



far more extensive work in the pure science of Natural History, 

 which is the primary occupation of its official staff. The Trustees 

 published in 1901 a descriptive treatise on Mosquitoes in three 

 volumes, with forty-two plates, which was prepared by Mr. Theobald 

 in connection with the specimens of Culicidfe ah'eady in the Museum, 

 and others specially collected for the work, with a view to assisting 

 in the study of the relationship of Culicidse to Malaria and other 

 diseases. A supplementary volume of this work, by Mr. Theobald, 

 has been completed and published in the present year. Also in the 

 present year the Trustees have published an illustrated monograph 

 on the Tsetse-flies, by Mr. Austen, Assistant in the Zoological 

 Department. Our rapidly increasing knowledge of the activity of 

 the minute parasites known as Trypanosoma, as the specific causes 

 of disease both in man and in horses and cattle, renders an accurate 

 knowledge of the species of Tsetse-flies necessary, since one of these 

 flies, the Glossina moritans of West wood, is the carrier of the 

 Trypanosoma causing the deadly disease of horses and cattle known 

 in South Africa as Nagana, and it is possible that other species of 

 Glossina are concerned, in a similar way, in the distribution of 

 disease. 



It is not, however, only in correspondence and publications, and 

 in the researches of the naturalists of the staff that this Museum 

 renders direct assistance to the development of the knowledge and 

 application of Economic Zoology. The large study collections of the 

 JMuseum have, for a long time past, comprised important series from 

 all parts of the world of carefully named and recorded specimens of 

 animals having economic importance, either as pests or as sources of 

 commercial products. In addition to these, several cases are now 

 exhibited in the North Hall of the Museum, in which the life-bistory 

 and activities of animals important to man in one or other of the 

 relations recognised in the classification adopted in this volume, are 

 illustrated with a view to the edification of the public, and the 

 promotion of the public interest in the thorough scientific treatment 

 of the subject. 



I have to thank the Board of Agriculture for permission to 

 reproduce some of the Keports furnished to the Board. 



E. EAY LANKESTEE. 



British Museum (Natural History), 

 London, S.W. 



May 15th, 1903. 



