218 ANIMAL LIFE AND HUMAN PROGRESS 



in their natural habitat or by placing suitable trees as traps, 

 would cause an appreciable diminution of the flies in small 

 localised areas and in the immediate neighbourhood of the 

 main roads. 



3. Destruction of Big Game. This very serious problem led 

 the Colonial Office to form an inter-departmental Committee 

 on Sleeping Sickness. In the Report issued in 1914 the follow- 

 ing recommendations were made (p. 21) : " Knowledge of 

 the disease, its cause, and its remedies is still in the making, 

 and hasty and imperfectly considered action of a drastic 

 character, such as the attempt to effect a general destruction 

 of wild animals, is not justified by the evidence before your 

 Committee. On the other hand, your Committee recommend 

 that until direct means of checking the fly have been dis- 

 covered, the food supply of the fly and the chance of infection 

 should be lessened in the vicinity of centres by the removal 

 of wild animals, and that for this purpose freedom be granted 

 to both settlers and natives to hunt and destroy the animals 

 within prescribed areas, and subject to prescribed conditions.'' 



Relaxation of the game laws in a country infected with 

 tsetse was granted to natives in the prescribed areas in Nyasa- 

 land. In these districts, however, the natives seem to take 

 little interest in game destruction, owing in no small measure 

 to the fact that they have no very effective method of their 

 own, and it would be most unwise, at this juncture, to supply 

 them with arms of precision, even if there was a prospect of 

 their using them when they got them. 



4. Medical. Before the advent of the great war the 

 Colonial Office, the Royal Society, the Colonial Governments 

 and other institutions sent out trained experts to investigate 

 trypanosomiasis and its cause. Thus we find, among others, 

 Sir David and Lady Bruce and their assistants engaged in 

 Nyasaland ; Drs. May, Yorke and Kinghorn in Northern 

 Rhodesia ; medical officers and others in Uganda and West 

 Africa. These workers collectively have shown us how to 

 combat the diseases in the light of our present knowledge. 

 It is not too much to say, therefore, that through the efforts 

 of these researchers great progress has already been made. 





