48 NATIVE THEOEY: TSETSE IN XVI. CENTUEY. 



stated that " the Lokoja natives, knowing nothing of microbes 

 and bacteria, assert that the fly extracts from a certain small red 

 monkey the virus with which it inoculates the bush cow or dwarf 

 buffalo." Though this is very possibly a simple folk-tale, it 

 perhaps suggests the advisability of examining the blood of the 

 South African baboon {Papio porcnrim, Bodd.) to see whether 

 Trypanosoma hrucei can be detected in it. 



Among contributions published in 1899, we may notice a 

 statement contained in Sir Harry Johnston's "History of the 

 Colonization of Africa by Alien Races " [l6o], with reference to 

 the destruction, apparently by the Tsetse-fly, of the horses and 

 camels of an early Portuguese expedition which proceeded from 

 Quelimane to Sena in 1569. This has already been alluded to 

 at the commencement of this chapter (see p. 31). In 1899, too, 

 W. Harvey Brown [l6l] wrote of the difficulty caused by the 

 Tsetse-fly in the importation of machinery into many of the 

 mining districts of Rhodesia, before the construction of the 

 Buluwayo Railway ; while the present writer reported the occur- 

 rence of Glossina longipalpis, Wied. (really Gl. palpalis, Rob.- 

 Desv.), in the vicinity of Freetown, Sierra Leone. 



In 1900 Mr. C. V. A. Peel [163] narrated his experience of 

 Glossina longipennis in Somaliland, and gave an interesting 

 description of the sensation of suddenly entering a " fly-belt." 

 In the same year Mr. H. A. Bryden [165] repeated the statement 

 of so many previous writers on sport in South Africa, by assert- 

 ing that " wherever the African bufialo is plentiful, there you 

 will almost certainly find the Tsetse-fly," adding that when the 

 bufialo was killed off" or driven out the fly disappeared. The 

 Bushman story that the fly breeds in buffalo droppings is referred 

 to as possibly accounting for its special association with the 

 animal, but since Bruce's description of the mode of reproduction 

 we know that belief to be a myth. Accoi-ding to Bryden, a line 

 of coaches from the Pungwe River towards Mashonaland, estab- 

 lished " when Rhodesia was first being opened up," had to be 

 abandoned owing to the deaths of the horses and mules from the 

 bites of the Tsetse-fly. 



In 1901 Sir Harry Johnston [166], in a Report on the Pro- 

 tectorate of Uganda, referred to the length of time formerly 

 taken on the journey to that country from the coast before the 

 construction of the Uganda Railway, since it "had to be per- 

 formed mainly on foot owing to the difficulty of conveying riding 

 animals through the belt of country near the coast infested with the 



