103 



for the destruction of game within a prescribed area in the southern 

 part of the Wankie district, within the limits of which antelopes and 

 other mammals were to be removed as thoroughly and rapidly as possible 

 by a series of hunts or battues, while the cleared area was, so far as 

 practicable, to be maintained free from such animals, by means of 

 patrols, for a sufficiently long period to test the effect on the fly. If 

 results within the area treated should warrant a continuance of this 

 method, operations would probably be extended to another area. As 

 an experiment in the destruction of the haunts of the fly, an isolated 

 patch of bush was selected, and it was proposed, after a preliminary 

 inspection to determine the degree of Tsetse infestation of this area, 

 to effect the complete removal of all evergreen or deciduous heavy- 

 foliaged trees by felling, coupled with burning of the grass. Such 

 clearing was to be repeated in subsequent seasons, with periodical 

 inspection by the entomologist to note results. 



About the time when the measures mentioned in the previous 

 paragraph were sanctioned, the Government Entomologist of Southern 

 Rhodesia reported (18) that, in the Sebungwe and Umniati fly areas, as 

 existing in June-Juty, 1918, records of extreme abundance of G. 

 morsitans in certain spots coincided, with one exception, with localities 

 where game was particularly plentiful. In the case of the exception 

 (on the west bank of the Umniati River) it was thought that the fly 

 might be feeding on the troops of baboons (cf. supra, pp. 91, 92), which 

 were extraordinarily plentiful there. The fact that game in this 

 neighbourhood had been checked- by professional hunters for the 

 previous five or six years, without a corresponding reduction in the 

 numbers of Tsetse, was considered disappointing, but not a proof that 

 this method would not succeed elsewhere, the unusual prevalence of 

 baboons being a complicating factor. 



A report by a committee appointed by the Natal Province, published 

 in 1918, recorded a very great spread of nagana in Zululand owing to 

 the presence of Tsetse-fly (G. pallidipes). In some localities natives 

 had not been able to keep cattle for several years, and others had 

 sustained heavy losses in their stock. Whatever arguments might be 

 brought forward with a view to disassociating trypanosomiasis from 

 game, it was considered that actual demonstration in Zululand had 

 clearly proved that, once the reservoir of infection in the shape of 

 certain species of game was removed from a locality, losses from 

 trypanosomiasis cease forthwith. In the opinion of the committee 

 it was imperative in the interests of a closer settlement of Zululand by 

 both Europeans and natives, that all game known to act, or suspected 

 of acting, as carriers of trypanosomiasis should be strictly confined 

 within the limits of their reserve. 



With regard to G. morsitans and big game in Nyasaland, a recent 

 paper by Dr. W. A. Murray (1010) states that, in the narrow forest 

 belt extending along the western shore of Lake Nyasa, from Chintechi 

 in the north to Fort Johnston and the Murchison Cataracts in the south, 

 the numbers and range of the fly have both diminished and increased 

 in correspondence with those of big game. " Enquiries from old 

 residents at Mvera," writes Dr. Murray, " elicited the fact that prior 

 to 1896, when the rinderpest swept through the land, and decimated 

 alike native cattle and all kinds of large game, the latter had roamed 

 freely over practically the whole of the forest, and that wherever game 

 was found there was also tsetse-fly. This information was confirmed 

 by Sir Alfred Sharpe, then Governor of the Nyasaland Protectorate, 

 during a conversation with the writer at Dowa, in 1902." For some 

 six or eight years after the rinderpest, according to Dr. Murray, the 



