40 FROM AN EASY CHAIR 



other blood-sucking insects, has become extremely 

 important, and has been carried on with great energy by 

 many specialists since it became known that these insects 

 play such a terribly important part in the causation 

 of disease. At the Natural History Museum I received 

 (in response to a circular issued at my request by H.M. 

 Government) thousands of specimens of gnats (mosqui- 

 toes) from all parts of the world, and some hundreds of 

 new species have been described in a series of volumes by 

 Professor F. V. Theobald, published by the trustees. 

 Other volumes are in preparation illustrating the blood- 

 sucking flies of various regions of the world, and one 

 concerning those of the British Islands has already 

 appeared. The common gnat, the spot-winged gnat, 

 and the tsetse-fly as well as the microscopic parasites 

 causing malaria and sleeping sickness are illustrated 

 by greatly enlarged models very carefully executed 

 under my direction, which are exhibited in the central 

 hall of the museum. 



It is a curious fact that the coloured races of men 

 especially those of Africa have little or no objection to 

 being bitten by flies. They seem to accept the atten- 

 tion of flies and ticks with indifference. The men sleep 

 in the day under trees, and are willing food-supply to 

 the insects. The eyelids of children are literally 

 inhabited by flies in some countries, and the folds of 

 the skin of fat adults hide whole rows of fast-holding 

 ticks. But the white man does not willingly permit 

 either fly, flea, or gnat to settle on him. He is (or has 

 been), nevertheless, unwisely tolerant of house-flies in 

 his habitations, and the poorer and less cleanly popula- 

 tion are in large proportion infested with wingless 

 insects. The newly established knowledge that certain 

 flies (glossina or tsetse-fly) are the carriers of sleeping 

 sickness, that gnats are the carriers of malaria and of 

 yellow fever, that fleas are the carriers of the plague, 

 and that certain kinds of ticks are the carriers of cattle- 



