20 THE SOCIETY FOR THE PEESERVATION OF 



The Supposed Special Dependence of the Species of Tsetse 

 KNOWN AS Glossina morsitans upon the Buffalo. 



Prior to the year 1903, when it was discovered by members of 

 the Sleeping Sickness Commission in Uganda that the parasite 

 of the disease that they were investigating is disseminated by 

 Glossina palpalis, the best-known species of tsetse was Glossina 

 morsitans, the only member of its genus found in Southern Africa, 

 where it was formerly abundant in suitable localities between the 

 Zambesi and St. Lucia Lake. That this tsetse is closely associated 

 with or dependent upon the buffalo has been frequently asserted 

 and reasserted during the last forty years — that is, ever since the 

 statement was first definitely made by Chapman in 1868.^ It 

 would seem that this belief is due partly to the fact, which is 

 clearly estabhshed by Mr. Selous's letters alluded to above, that 

 in Africa south of the Zambesi buffaloes and G. morsitans at one 

 time abounded in precisely the same spots, and partly to the old 

 native idea, adopted by many of the earlier big-game hunters, that 

 the fly breeds in buffalo dung. The true life-history of the tsetse- 

 flies, however, was elucidated in 1895 by Colonel David Bruce in 

 the course of his epoch-making researches into the cause of tsetse- 

 fly disease of domestic animals, and we now know that no species 

 of tsetse breeds in the droppings of the buffalo or of any other 

 animal.- That the buffalo cannot be held to be specially re- 

 sponsible for the existence of tsetse in the East Africa Protectorate 

 was satisfactorily established in 1901 by a series of letters from 

 well-qualified observers forwarded to the Foreign Office, and 

 elicited by the assertion that to protect this animal would be equi- 

 valent to protecting tsetse as well.^ For the buffalo in British 

 Central Africa a similar plea of ' Not guilty ' was, as has already 

 been mentioned, successfully urged by Sir Alfred Sharpe in the 

 recent Field correspondence. In many parts of North-Western 



* James Chapman, Travels in the Interior of South Africa (Two vols. 

 London : Bell and Daldy ; Edward Stanford 1868). Vol. i. p. 177. 



2 The female tsetse does not lay eg"o;s, as do the majority of other flies, 

 but produces living- maggots — a single maggot at each birth ; this maggot is 

 retained within the body of its parent, and nourished by the secretion of 

 special glands, until it is full -grown ; on being extruded it crawls away and 

 buries itself in the ground, where it at once turns into a chrysalis, from which 

 the perfect fly makes its appearance in due course. In 1906 Dr. A. G. 

 Bagshawe discovered the pupse (chrysalides) of (rlossina palpalii^ in loose 

 crumbling soil around the roots of bananas on the shore of Lake Albert 

 Edward {Nature, October 25, 1906, p. 636). Mr. E. L. Harger, in the course of 

 the letter referred to above, states that he has often watched tsetse 

 {G. morsitans) deposit ' eggs ' (i.e. maggots) in the damp earth thrown up by 

 the digging of a trench round his tent. 



3 See Austen, Monograph of the Tsetse-ffie^. Chapter VII. Appendix C, 

 pp. 290-297. ' Copies of Letters on the subject of the supposed connection 

 between the Tsetse and the Buffalo (BitJjahis caffer, Sparrman) : transmitted 

 by the Foreign Ofiice to the British Museum (Natural History).' 



