( cxviii ) 



forwarded from Rukuba Hill, 4000 ft., German East Africa, 

 by Mr. W. F. Poulton, a veterinary officer of the Uganda 

 Protectorate, with the following interesting note on its habits. 

 Mr. Poulton was treating an outbreak of South African horse- 

 sickness in a troop of mules when on military service, and when 

 attending the animals at night he constantly noticed a number 

 of moths about them. " They would alight on the animal's 

 head, either in close proximity to the eye or on the nose ; from 

 the latter they would make their way straight to the eye, 

 elongate the proboscis and feed on the secretion which collects 

 under the lower lid. The proboscis would also wander over 

 the cornea, making the animal blink several times and causing 

 increased lachrymal secretion. The moths never settled on the 

 rugs with which the mules were covered or on any excreta ; 

 they invariably alighted on the head. There was no particular 

 preference displayed for a sick beast over a healthy one." 

 Mr. Poulton very diffidently suggests the possibility that these 

 insects may be the transmitting agents of horse-sickness. 

 Unfortunately this is one of those diseases in which the causa- 

 tive organism is ultra-microscopical, rendering it much more 

 difficult to ascertain the carrier with certainty. It has, how- 

 ever, been sufficiently demonstrated that the carrier is a 

 nocturnal insect, and the work of Dr. Watkins-Pitchford 

 and Sir Arnold Theiler has rather pointed to its being a 

 mosquito and probably an Anopheles. It is true that the 

 range of the disease coincides fairly well with that of the 

 moth, but this applies also to Anopheles Iran svaalen sis and 

 A. cinereus. 



Mr. R. W. Jack, Government Entomologist in Southern 

 Rhodesia, has informed the exhibitor that this same moth 

 occurs commonly about cattle kraals in Rhodesia in the even- 

 ing, flying round the cattle and feeding at their eyes. He 

 suspects that it may possibly carry a form of ophthalmia from 

 which cattle suffer in that country. 



Mr. Bethune-Baker inquired whether the moths irritated 

 the animals, and Dr. INTarshall replied that apparently they did 

 not annoy them in the least, and Mr. Bethune-Baker then 

 referred to a somewhat similar occurrence narrated in the 

 " Annales " of the Entomological Society of France, but in this 



