12 THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESEBVATION OF 



would soon be numbered among the various forms of animal life 

 that have become extuict within living memory. This belief 

 found prominent expression in the colunms of the public press on 

 more than one occasion during 1907 and 1906. The attack of 1906 

 was dealt with by myself at the time, and subsequently in some 

 remarks that I ventured to address to the Secretary of State for 

 the Colonies, as a member of the deputation from our Society 

 received by Lord Elgin at the Colonial Office on June 15 of that 

 year.^ In 1907 the attack was renewed by Mr. T. M. Hastings, 

 who, in a letter headed ' Game Preservation and the Tsetse-Fly,' 

 published in the Spectator of March 2, suggested that ' an experi- 

 ment might very well be made of killing and driving away the 

 game over a certain fly district and observing carefully whether it 

 be followed by a disappearance of the fly — that is to say, the 

 particular species which conveys the infection. ' This letter was 

 replied to in the same journal a fortnight later by Mr. E. N. 

 Buxton, who pointed out that, in order that the experiment should 

 be satisfactory, the area selected would have to be ' an extremely 

 wide one.' Other letters followed, in one of which Mr. Hastings 

 affirmed his belief that ' there is no doubt whatever now . . . that 

 the particular species of tsetse which produces cattle sickness can 

 be got rid of by getting rid of the game, ' proceeding to remark that 

 ' the question which remains to be solved is whether the other 

 species [Glossina palpalis] is subject to the same law. ' - More 

 recently a much more detailed correspondence, initiated by a letter 

 from Mr. R. L. Harger,"" of Blantyre, British Central Africa, has 

 appeared in the Field, in which Mr. F. C. Selous and Sir Alfred 

 Sharpe figured as protagonists. In all these letters the species of 

 tsetse referred to was Glossina vwrsitans, the best-known dis- 

 seminator of tsetse-fly disease in domestic animals, and the fly 

 with which, owing to its quondam abundance in the valleys and 

 along the tributaries of the Limpopo and the Zambesi, the in- 

 numerable records and statements on the subject of tsetse in the 

 older books on South African sport and exploration are concerned. 

 Mr. Harger, who has had many years' experience in the countries 

 administered by the British South Africa Company, and whose 

 sympathies are entirely on the side of the game, commenced his 

 letter by stating that : ' There is great likelihood of a vast deal of 

 game being destroyed in North-Eastern and North-Western 

 Rhodesia owing to the presence of tsetse-fly.' He then en- 

 deavoured to show that the undoubted increase and extension of 

 Glossina morsitans in North-Eastern Rhodesia of late years is in 



^ Vide 'Journal of the Society for the Preservation of the Wihl Fauna of 

 the Empire,' vol. iii. 1907, pp. 43-44, and 24-26. 



■■^ The tS2M-'ctotor, April 6, 1907, p. 31. It is perhaps permissible to observe 

 that, to a scientific mind conversant with the facts, the use of the word 

 'law' in this connection would seem unwarranted. 



3 The Field, September 28, 1907, p. 582. 



