HOOFED ANIMALS 5 



A matter which seems likely vitally to affect the 

 position if not the very existence of the hoofed animals 

 in certain parts of Africa, is that of their suggested con- 

 nexion with the insect-carried diseases which affect man 

 .and his domestic animals. 



The most pernicious of these insects is the tsetse fly, 

 which carries a disease known as sleeping sickness, fatal 

 to human beings, but not to domestic animals ; and 

 another, called nagana, which kills the latter but does 

 not affect the former. 



The tsetse is an insect a little larger than an ordinary 

 house fly, and is extremely active and quick on the wing ; 

 the bite feels like the puncture of a red-hot needle. There 

 are many different kinds of tsetses, but it now appears 

 that all are more or less responsible for both diseases, 

 where such happen to exist in a locality. 



Wild animals do not contract either of these fatal 

 ailments sleeping sickness and nagana and experts 

 have discovered the germs of both in the blood of wild 

 animals of many kinds, both warm and cold blooded. It 

 is therefore clear that the tsetse, first biting an immune 

 wild creature which carries the disease germs in its blood 

 harmlessly to itself, then proceeds to attack a man or a 

 domestic animal, injects into one or other the poison 

 which it has taken from the blood of the wild animal, 

 and so causes death. Both diseases are nearly abso- 

 lutely fatal ; sleeping sickness to man, and nagana to 

 stock. A fly which has not previously fed on affected 

 blood gives a harmless bite. Sleeping sickness has been 

 known only in the tropical parts of Africa, but nagana 

 was at one time spread over a large part of the forest 

 country of South Africa, and is still prevalent wherever 

 there is tsetse fly. 



Knowledge of the above facts, and the belief that game 



