32 "TSALTSALYA" OR "ZIMB" OF JAMES BRUCE. 



which there can be little doubt was the Tsetse. Sir Harry 

 Johnston proceeds to show [145] that — "But for the Tsetse-fly, 

 the whole history of South-Central Africa would be different." 



Returning to the nineteenth century, we find as early as the year 

 1813, in the well-known "Travels to DiscoA'er the Source of the 

 Nile," of James Bruce [l], statements concerning the " Tsaltsalya 

 or Fly," of which the modern Arabic name is said to be Zimb. 

 This insect, of which a rough wood-cut is given, is stated to be 

 destructive to cattle during the rainy season on the Upper 

 Atbara River, on the confines of the Sudan and Abyssinia. All 

 that can be said, after an examination of the description and 

 figure, is that the insect is either a Tsetse or a horse-fly (Family 

 Tabanidse) belonging to the genus Pangonia. James Bruce con- 

 sidered that it was the " fly " referred to in Isaiah vii, 1 8 and 1 9 

 [see l], and Westwood [lO], writing thirty-seven years later, was 

 of the opinion that Bruce's "Zimb" was at any rate a species of 

 Glossina, if not actually Gl. morsitans. If this is so, it is inte- 

 resting as showing that the range of the genus extends to the 

 Sudan on the Abyssinian frontier. 



Robineau-Desvoidy [3], writing in 1830, expressed his belief 

 that the proboscis of Nemorhina (Glossina) palpalis (see below, 

 p. 71) was not used for sucking blood, an opinion that, as we 

 shall see, was subsequently shared by his compatriot Macquart.* 



So far as it has been possible to discover, the earliest English 

 writer to refer to the Tsetse-fly in South Africa was Captain 

 (afterwards Sir) William Cornwallis Harris [5], who, in his " Wild 

 Sports of Southern Africa," published in 1839, states that the 

 Mural Berge, a range of hills on the south side of the Limpopo, 

 in the Waterberg district of the present Transvaal, are, especially 

 during the rainy season, "infested by a large species of gad-fly, 

 nearly the size of a honey-bee, the bite of which .... proves 

 fatal to cattle." In spite of this misleading description, and 

 although the Tsetse is not mentioned by name, there can be no 

 doubt that it is the fly referred to. 



* In a letter written in 1901, Mr. F. J. Jackson, C.B., the well-known 

 African sportsman, gives it as his opinion that the Tsetse is, "like the 

 mosquito, only a blood-sucker by predilection" (see Chapter VII., 

 Appendix C, p. 297), by which he doubtless means that in default of blood 

 it is able to exist on the juices of plants. In support of his view he 

 rnentions that in the fly-belt near Kibwezi, British East Africa, in April, 

 1892, when the whole district was " parched and dried up," and conse- 

 quently destitute of game of any kind, he found the Tsetse more plentiful 

 than he has ever known them before or since ; but he does not say that 

 he has ever seen a Tsetse-fly imbibing vegetable juices. 



