70 HABITS OF GLOSSINA TALPALTS. 



2 $ 9 ) locality unknown [V.— The types of Gl. veutricusa, 

 Big.]. 



Var. tachinuides, Westw. — 1 ^, "West Africa" [O. — The 

 type of Gl. tachinoides, Westw.] ; 2 9 $ , R. Gambia, between 

 Nov. 1901 and Jan. 1902 (Dr. J. K Button); 2 (J ^ , 2 $ ?, 

 " Zambesi " {Dr. (afterwards Sir) John Kirk). 



Habits, etc. 



Glossina paljMlis was quite common in the vicinity of Free 

 Town, Sierra Leone, during the months of August and September, 

 1899. It always seems to occur along the beds of streams, where 

 it is fond of sitting on stones projecting from the water ; it also 

 abounds in mangrove thickets fringing the mouths of streams, 

 close to the sea-shore. On oiie occasion I found it among bushes 

 on the hillside below Wilberforce, settling on stones in a small 

 stream barely a yard in width. The fly was also met with on 

 the way to Regent, where the I'oad crosses a little brook, and it 

 probably occurs along all the streams in the neighbourhood of 

 Free Town. It bites and sucks human blood freely, and the 

 writer and two companions were once severely bitten by it Avhile 

 resting undressed on the sea-shore after bathing, close to a 

 mangrove thicket at the mouth of a stream. The fly is remark- 

 ably active and exceedingly difficult to catch, but persistently 

 returns to the same spot. English-speaking natives, when 

 questioned, call it a " mangrove-fly," — a name that, in West 

 Africa, is also indiscriminately applied to various species of the 

 blood-sucking Tabanidte (Horse-flies). 



As to the var. tachinoides, Dr. J. Everett Dutton, of the 

 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in a letter to Mr. F. 

 V. Theobald, dated "Liverpool, Feb. 21st, 1902," writes as 

 follows : " The small mangrove-fly is very prevalent up the river 

 Gambia, where it comes on board the launches and bites 

 viciously. — Now the case of Trypanosoma I found in Bathurst 

 was in an Englishman who was master of the Government 

 launch, living on board, and frequently bitten by this fly. — It 

 is also interesting to note that the Colonial Surgeon informs me 

 that the cases amongst the natives which he has seen, with 

 similar symptoms to those in the white man, occurred in boatmen 

 plying up and down the river." 



