WERNER MARCHAND 13 



nected with the discoveries of Theobald Smith (1893), Bruce (1895), 

 Ross (1897), Grassi (1900), and Reed (1901), had attracted attention 

 to all blood-sucking insects as possible carriers, and the influence on 

 the study of Tabanidae showed itself in the progress of knowledge of 

 their early stages. In the following period extending up to the 

 present, studies on these have been made largely under the auspices 

 of medical entomology. The progress resulting is considerable, the 

 number of publications on the subject within the last fifteen years 

 being about equal to that of papers published previous to 1900. 



To the interest aroused in the study of Tabanidae from the medical 

 point of view we owe in the first place a knowledge of life histories of 

 tabanids of tropical countries, chiefly Africa and India, where the 

 importance of these flies as carriers of disease is paramount. In 1908 

 King was sent by the British -Government to the Sudan in charge of 

 economic entomology in the Wellcome Research Laboratory in Khar- 

 toum. He goes into the subject more extensively than any of the 

 previous authors, working out the life history of the black African 

 horse-fly, Tabanus bignUatus (1908) and of Tahanus ditceniatus, 

 tceniola, kingi, and par (1910), succeeding for the first time in causing 

 tabanids to oviposit in captivity, and giving minute descriptions of 

 larval structures, which appear cumbersome but may well serve to 

 separate the species described from others not yet known. At 

 about the same time we learn of tabanid larvae in India from Maxweil- 

 Leffroy and Howlett, Indian insect life (1909), a work, however, 

 written more from the point of view of agricultural interests, while 

 Baldrey and Mitzmain studied tabanids in captivity with the imme- 

 diate object of determining their part as carriers of disease. Baldrey 

 (1911-12) had Tabanus orientis oviposit in captivity, but made no 

 observations on the larvas. Mitzmain has made a very complete in- 

 vestigation on the life history of a single tabanid species, Tabanus 

 striatus (1913). Mitzmain worked in the Philippine Islands and dem- 

 onstrated experimentally the transmission of surra (1913) and anthrax 

 (1914) by this species. His omission of reference to previous litera- 

 ture has been commented upon, but as his work was done far away 

 from large libraries he was naturally handicapped in this respect. 

 While Mitzmain raised his flies entirely in captivity, Bainb ridge 

 and Fletcher (1914) reported the oviposition of the same species in the 



