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CHAPTER II. 

 HISTORICAL SURVEY. 



I. — Bionomic. 



In the minds of most people Tsetse-fiies appear to be especially 

 associated with the name of David Livingstone, as though 

 the celebrated missionary-explorer had been the first to discover 

 and bring them to notice. This assumption, however, is not 

 borne out by facts. As may be seen from the " Bibliography " 

 (Chapter VI.), and as will be shown below, Livingstone's works 

 contain numerous statements concerning the Tsetse, while at the 

 outset of the expedition which resulted in his death among the 

 swamps of Lake Bangweolo Livingstone made a particulai'ly 

 interesting experiment with a viev,- to ascertaining whether 

 Iildian buffaloes and camels were proof against the disease 

 disseminated by the fly. But, as will be seen later on, references 

 to the Tsetse-fly and its habits had appeared in works published 

 before the year 1857 (the date of the publication of " Missionary 

 Travels"), while for the earliest notices of the havoc wrought by 

 the fly* we must go back nearly three hundred years. 



According to Sir Harry Johnston [145, 160] t we read in 

 Portiiguese records how the " earlier Portuguese expeditions of 

 five hundred or six hundred mounted men, which would set out 

 from Sena on the Lower Zambezi in the 16th and 17th centuries 

 to secure the gold mines to the north and south," were brought 

 to ruin owing to the deaths of the horses from the bite of a fly, 



* In a chapter dealing with fcho history of our knowledge of the Tsetse- 

 fiies it is impossibio to avoid constant reference to Tsetse-fly disectse, 

 although, since the epoch-maising work of Lieut. -Col. Bruce (see 

 Chapter \1L., Appendix A), the earlier theories as to the etiology of the 

 disease possess a purely historic interest. 



t The numbers in square brackets refer to the "Bibliography" 

 (Chapter VI.). 



