2 rSE AND OEIGIN OF TEEM "TSETSE." 



originally used by thera to mean Glossina morsitans, and that 

 species alone. Even at the present day it is still so used by the 

 majority of people interested in African problems, who are un- 

 aware of the existence of more than one species of Glossina. For 

 a long time, indeed, while " the Dark Continent" was no mere 

 figure of speech, and a trip to the Victoria Falls was looked upon 

 as a journey into " the Far Interior," Glossina morsitans remained 

 the only species known by practical experience, or to any but 

 entomologists. With the opening up of Africa, however, people 

 have encountered other species of Glossina, and, recognising 

 their similarity to or perhaps not distinguishing them from 

 Gl. morsitans, have spoken of them as " the Tsetse," or " the 

 Tsetse-fly." Thus, although it is a fact that certain writers have 

 used the phrase " the true Tsetse-fly," apparently with the 

 intention of distinguishing Gl. morsitans from its congeners, the 

 word Tsetse has . in recent years undoubtedly come to be 

 employed in a generic rather than a specific sense, and it is in a 

 generic sense that it will be used in the present work. It is 

 true that we have yet to discover whether all the species of 

 Glossina are capable of conveying the h?ematozoon of Tsetse-fly 

 disease, or whether this baleful distinction belongs to Gl. mor- 

 sitans alone."' But the species of the genus difi*er so markedly 

 from other blood-sucking flies in various details of external 

 structure, as well as in their appearance (due to the mode of 



in one or other of its forms without offering any explanation. Standard 

 dictionaries of the English language complacently label the word "native 

 name," and proceed to give a short description of the fly. I am indebted 

 to my friend and coUeagiie Mr. R. Campbell Thompson, of the Department 

 of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum, for the nearest 

 approach to a solution of the question yet achieved. After searching 

 through a number of African vocabularies, Mr. Thompson writes as 

 follows: — " W. H. J. Bleek's 'Languages of Mozambique' (1856) gives '.a 

 comparative table of African dialects, and under 'fiy' are the follo\sing 

 (the name of the dialect in each case is given in bracliets) : — (Sofala) 

 Tundsi ; (Tette) Sense ; (Sena and Quilimane) Tsense. I think the las-t 

 probably solves the mystery, as the letter n is so constantly assimilated." 

 It is therefore possible that a native word, which perhaps originally 

 signified any fly, eventuall)', in the valleys of the Zambesi and the 

 Limpopo, came to be specially applied, bj' the natives themselves, to the 

 genus Glossina; just as among Englishmen in South Africa at the present 

 day the Tsetse is commonly spoken of as "the fly." On the other 

 hand, the earliest English and Dutch hunters to penetrate into the 

 Waterberg and Zoutpansberg, on being told by their Kafir boys that the 

 unfamiliar insect which was persecuting their trek-oxen and horses was 

 "Tsetse," may have merely received from them the native equivalent for 

 "a fly." 



*■ Seb Chapter VII., Appendix E., p. 300. .; 



