USUAL HAUNTS OF TSETSE. 7 



existence, all recent evidence goes to show that the most 

 important element is the physical character of the locality. 

 Thus, Mr. Alfred Sharpe writing from British Central Africa to 

 Lord Lansdowne in 1901, with reference to the special con- 

 nection which many people have supposed to exist between the 

 Tsetse and the buffalo, states that " what regulates the presence 

 of Tsetse-fly is the description of the country almost as much as 

 the abundance or scarcity of game." (See Chapter VII., Ap- 

 pendix C, p. 295.) As a general rule it may be said that the 

 Tsetse is confined to damp, hot, low-lying localities, either on the 

 borders of rivers or lakes, or at any rate not far from water. 

 Cover in the shape of more or less thick bush or forest is 

 essential, and the fly is not found on open grass plains. In the 

 days when South Africa was still a sportsman's paradise, and the 

 veld in what is now the Orange River Colony was teeming with 

 game of every kind, the early hunters who rode and shot over 

 those plains never met with the Tsetse until, pushing farther 

 afield, they entered the hot, moist kloofs in the valley of the 

 Limpopo. 



James Chapman [30], one of the earliest authorities, writing 

 in 1868, states that " the Tsetse-fly is generally found within a 

 few miles of water, in rich sandy ridges near marshy spots, and 

 generally in mopani or mimosa forests." In the Northern 

 Transvaal the Tsetse in some places is found on low hills, and 

 Vardon and Oswell having met with the original specimens of 

 Glossina movsitans on the Siloquana Hills (between the Maga- 

 laqueen or Nylstroom River and the Limpopo) in 1845, Vardon 

 was led to assert that it is " usually found on hills." Later 

 knowledge, however, does not warrant such a generalisation, 

 although it is true that patches of Tsetse-fly are not always 

 situated in low-lying districts. Thus, while in British Central 

 Africa, according to Sir Harry Johnston [145], the Tsetse-fly is 

 " roughly speaking .... absent from any district that is above 

 3,000 feet in altitude," Captain A. St. H. Gibbons [152] in 

 Northern Rhodesia, in February, 1896, during the wet season, 

 found it veiy troublesome on high ground to the south of the 

 head-watei's of the Nanyate River, at an altitude of 4,110 feet 

 above the sea-level. This, however, must be somewhat excep- 

 tional, and it is in hot, moist river-valleys that fly-belts 

 generally occur. In the Jubaland Province of the British East 

 Africa Protectorate, according to Mr. J. W. P. McClellan, " The 

 worst places are damp, dark, and lowJyingj shaded chiefly by 



