142 



Food. A large series of G. morsitans caught where game is plentiful 

 should be examined to determine the percentages which have fed 

 respectively on mammals, birds and reptiles. Mr. Lloyd, in Rhodesia, 

 examined 310 flies and found mammalian corpuscles in the gut of 70, 

 and nucleated red corpuscles, reptilian or avian, in the gut of 12, 

 i.e., in 15 per cent, of those which contained indigested blood. This 

 is a considerable percentage, seeing that these flies are beheved by 

 many to depend on game for their subsistence. The examination 

 should be repeated over a larger series, and an effort should be made 

 to distinguish avian from reptihan blood. 



Further, a large series of G. morsitans in an area free from game, 

 such as that described by Major Stevenson Hamilton, should be 

 examined to determine on what food they subsist, and whether they 

 contain trypanosomes pathogenic to laboratory animals or stock. 

 This might be done in an " experiment-of-game-destruction " area, 

 if the flies remained in it and no favtjurable opportunity occurred 

 under natural conditions, but a naturally game-free area is preferable, 

 because here the flies have had time to adapt themselves to their 

 environment and possibly have learned to attack animals which 

 ordinarily they disregard. 



HowLETT (F. M.). Report of the Imperial Pathological Entomologist. 



Rept. Agnc. Research Inst. <fe Coll., Pusa, for 1912-13, Calcvtta, 

 1914, pp. 80-83. 



The author says that the work of the Stegomyia Survey on the 

 seasonal prevalence of the different species has established as a practical 

 certainty that all species are normally in the habit of tiding over 

 periods of drought in the egg stage, even though these periods may be 

 of six months or even longer duration. The operations against /Sfe^rom^/m 

 at Pusa have been very successful, and in the year under report the 

 species has become quite rare in the bungalows. The methods adopted 

 have been the filling up, with earth or plaster of Paris, of all the known 

 or probable br(>eding-places, particularly holes in trees and cut bamboos, 

 and the simultaneous provision of trap breeding-places in the form of 

 bamboo joints filled with water which are emptied out as soon as 

 larvae make their appearance in them. The author regards this 

 trap method as an advance on indiscriminate destruction and thinks 

 it might be valuable in anti-malarial operations. Observations have 

 been made as to the action of different chemical substances on the 

 eggs and larvae of Stegotnyia scutellaris, Anopheles rossii and Culex 

 fatigans and microanmdatus. It has been found that powdered 

 calomel has many of the properties of a good larvicide, and the author 

 thinks that it deserves an extended trial to ascertain its cost and 

 efficiency under field conditions. Its action is slow, but sure, and 

 apparently lasting, and the amount required is so small that water 

 treated with it is in no w^ay harmful or uncomfortable for ordinary 

 use by man or cattle. 



For flight determinations carmine powder and gentian violet have 

 given good results in the identification of mosquitos. 



The breeding of the West Indian " Milhons " fish, though successful 

 under semi-domestic conditions, proved a failure. The fish were 



