36 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 262. 



Mr. J. B. Hatoher, is a small species of Phoro- 

 rhacoi, or some closely allied genus, In which the 

 sternum is preserved, that this sternum is 

 slightly keeled, and, although no critical com- 

 parisons have been made, that the general 

 aspect of the sternum is like that of Cariama or 

 Oypogeranua. F. A. L. 



THE 3IALABIA EXPEDITION TO WEST 

 AFRICA. 

 Major Ronald Ross, the lecturer to the 

 Liverpool School of Tropical Diseases, who re- 

 cently headed the malaria mission to Sierra 

 Leone, delivered an address on December 27th 

 at Liverpool, on the invitation of the African 

 trade section of the Liverpool Chamber of Com- 

 merce. His subject was ' The Recent Medical 

 Expedition to West Africa.' According to the 

 London Times Major Ross said that politics and 

 science were culminating in two movements of 

 high importance. In politics the Great Powers, 

 tired of self-development, were endeavoring to 

 extend their possessions and civilization all over 

 the world ; while in science they had created 

 what was perhaps the most fundamentally im- 

 portant of all knowledge — the experimental 

 science of disease. He believed that in the 

 coming century the success of Imperialism 

 would depend largely upon success with the 

 microscope. Our possessions in Africa were 

 battle grounds between Englishmen and king 

 malaria : they were conquests maintained only 

 at the sacrifice of hecatombs of our country- 

 men. Malarial fever was perhaps the most im- 

 portant of the diseases of the tropics. For along 

 time they could obtain no accurate knowledge 

 as to how the disease was produced, but 

 in the last two years they had ascertained 

 definitely at least one mode of infection. They 

 knew for certain that malarial fever was often, 

 perhaps always, caused by the bite of the 

 species of gnat or mosquito called anopheles. 

 The object of the expedition from the Liverpool 

 School of Tropical diseases was to ascertain 

 whether there was any chance of exterminat- 

 ing the anopheles from a given malarious 

 area. It was not the immediate purpose, as 

 some supposed, to banish malaria then and 

 there from the whole continent of Africa. 

 They wished to inquire what could be done in 



two or three square miles. They selected Free 

 Town, Sierra Leone, for the investigation, and 

 reached there last August. After describing 

 Free town, Major Ross said that the mission set 

 themselves to work at once on the lines of the 

 recent investigations in India and Italy. In a 

 few days they found numbers of the anopheles, 

 and in a few days more they discovered the 

 germs of malaria actually within those insects. 

 They knew then to an absolute certainty that 

 the anopheles of Sierra Leone were responsible 

 at least for a large part of the fever there. 

 The next thing was to ascertain how they bred. 

 Those very dangerous insects bred in small 

 pools or puddles of a certain kind easy to de- 

 tect when one had once seen them. They 

 made a map of those pools and carefully 

 studied the habits of the insects' larvse. The 

 conclusion they unanimously came to was that 

 it would probably be an easy and inexpensive 

 matter to rid the town almost entirely of the 

 anopheles either by destroying the larvae in the 

 puddles or, bettter still, by draining away the 

 puddles altogether. 



Comparing the general mode of life of Euro- 

 peans in Sierra Leone and India, Major Ross 

 said that, though Sierra Leone was scarcely 

 more fatal to Europeans than some parts of 

 India, it was certainly much more unhealthy 

 thau the large majority of Indian towns and 

 cantonments were. He confessed that after a 

 service of many years iu India and Burma he 

 was much struck with a certain negligence in 

 respect to some matters in Africa. In India 

 Englishmen had learned how best to live in trop- 

 ical countries. They had certain fixed institu- 

 tions which they seldom did without. He re- 

 ferred to the commodious bungalow, with its 

 large compound, the punkah, and the mosquito 

 netting on the beds. There was no doubt 

 all those were of great assistance, but in Sierra 

 Leone he was astonished to find none of those 

 things, at least in general use. Instead of there 

 being a separate European quarter on the high- 

 est ground available and consisting of well-built 

 houses each in the midst of an open garden, 

 most Europeans in Freetown occupied poor 

 wooden structures quite unfit for English peo- 

 ple in that pestiferous climate, crowded together 

 and mingled with the houses of the towns- 



