200 



crossings, and on a long devious return journey the same observation 

 was made. The season may possibly account for the absence of this 

 fly and further inquiry is very desirable, but it would nevertheless 

 appear that the great eastern forest which stretches under the equator 

 between the Congo-Lualaba and the 28th meridian and more to the 

 north in the upper Ituri as far as the 30th meridian, is far less frequented 

 by G. jJalpalis than the Central Congo forest. Outside the eastern 

 boundary of the forest G. palpalis is found in Irumu in strips of forest 

 along the Shari and in great abundance along the Semliki and its 

 tributaries with forest on the banks. The elevated plateau of Walendu 

 between Irumu and Lake Albert is free from fly. G. palpalis is to be 

 found all along the western shore of Lake Albert between the mouths 

 of the Semliki and the Rutshuru, where it is sheltered by the dense 

 belt of Phragmites communis which borders the lake. To the south 

 of Lake Albert, the fly was only found along the Rutshuru and some 

 of its affluents and never above an altitude of 3,900-4,000 feet. The 

 note attached to specimens of G. palpalis var. fasciptes in the Paris 

 Museum that they were taken on the volcanos of Kivu at heights from 

 4,800 to 9,700 feet is probably an error in labelling ; the author failed 

 to find G. palpalis on the shores of Lake Kivu or on the island of 

 Kwidjwi. With regard to the general distribution of G. palpalis, 

 males and females occur in about equal numbers in inhabited areas, 

 while males predominate in uninhabited ones ; figures of catches at 

 different places are given which support this. 



M. Roubaud, in a note to this paper, suggests that the labelling 

 of the specimens referred to may be correct and the result of seasonal 

 migration, and doubts whether the generalisation as to the distribution 

 of the sexes can be accepted, though more or less true of the males in 

 uninhabited places, owing to their greater power of flight. 



RiNGENBACH (J.) & Guyomarc'h (— ). Notes de G§ographie m^di- 

 cale de la Section francaise de la Mission de delimitation Afrique 

 6quatoriale francaise-Cameroun en 1912-1913. [Notes on Medical 

 Geography by the French boundary Commission to Equatorial 

 Africa and tlie Cameroons in 1912-1913.]— 5w^L Soc. Path. Exot., 

 Paris, viii, no.' 7, 1915, 1 map, pp. 515-546. 



In this report which deals with the distribution of sleeping sickness 

 in ,the areas visited, the following experiment on the value of fat or 

 oil as a protection against tsetse-flies was made daring a three days' 

 canoe journey along the Motaba River to Mombelle. The canoe was 

 propelled by 16 natives ; the bodies of half of them were well smeared 

 with palm oil and the other half untreated ; in three hours 119 flies 

 settled on the greased men and 173 on the untreated ones ; in the 

 former case, the flies remained on the body but a very short time and 

 rarely bit, while the untreated men were badly bitten and the flies 

 never left their bodies until gorged. 



In the country passed through, man is the sole reservoir of the 

 virus; big game is relatively scarce. Transmission seems to be both 

 direct and indirect, and biting insects other than Glossina may play 

 the part of mechanical carriers. Tsetse-flies were very rare m one 

 village, where 12| per cent, of the population were infected. 



