78 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



EDITORIAL GLEANINGS. 



Tsetse and Big Game. — Major J. Stevenson Hamilton, Warden 

 of the Transvaal Game Reserves, has a most important letter on the 

 tsetse and big game preservation in the ' Buluwayo Chronicle,' from 

 which we extract the following : — 



" A good many hasty conclusions are apt to be drawn. Farmers 

 lose stock, and naturally cry out that the game must go, without 

 pausing to find out if the game is the real or the only culprit. Then 

 there are many people who want to exploit the game, and on the 

 principle of abusing your victim before you knock him down, try to 

 make as good a case as they can against it, in order that they may 

 justify themselves, and thereafter feel that their sport or profit-taking 

 is surrounded by the halo of benefit to the country. 



" It is an indisputable fact that tsetse-fly is well able to exist 

 without the assistance either of the blood of buffaloes or of that of 

 any of the larger mammals known as ' big ' game, and conversely 

 that buffalo and other big game are found in districts perfectly 

 clear of fly. I notice it stated that fly and buffalo disappeared from 

 the Crocodile River (Transvaal side) years ago. This is but partly 

 correct. I have lived within the area in question for eight years, 

 and have, in common with other members of the game reserve staff, 

 trekked through every part of it with horses, donkeys, and oxen, so 

 that I may lay claim to some knowledge of conditions there. Tsetse- 

 fly disappeared during the rinderpest, as was the case elsewhere 

 wherever the epidemic passed. It has been generally taken for 

 granted that it disappeared after the rinderpest because the game, 

 and more especially the buffalo, having been exterminated, there was 

 nothing more for it to live upon. But this was not the case within 

 the area of which I am now speaking. The fly had absolutely 

 disappeared after the disease had passed, but the game was by no 

 means exterminated. In the Eastern Transvaal, therefore, is found 

 a case of buffalo existing in large and increasing numbers within 

 what was once a fly belt, but which is now completely free from the 

 pest. I feel tolerably certain that though we may kill out the big 

 game we shall still find the fly with us, and the action will be 



