THE TSETSE PROBLEM IN NORTH MOSSURISE. 349 



but the primary and primary-like elements — particularly Khaya nyasica, but also 

 Trichilia sp., Lecaniodiscus fraxinifolia, musando (a splendid leguminous tree 

 unidentified, sometimes erroneously called mukarati), Oxyanthus gerrardi, etc. — 

 now so dominate as approximately to reproduce the conditions illustrated in Plate ix. 

 The woody undergrowth is not quite dense, and there is a leaf carpet, not a live one. 

 Great blocks of a crystalline quartzite appear above the surface, and the soil, 

 evidently derived from this rock, is red • and finely sandy but compact. 

 Many lianas are present, and it was under an inter-coiled mass of these that the 

 main batch of puparia (30) was found. 



Shortly before reaching the Rupisi I had passed the ruined homestead of the late 

 Mr. W. H. C. Coward, formerly a hermit in these wilds. His head-boy, aptly named 

 Long One, had given me much information with regard to the tsetses hereabouts 

 and had accompanied me on to the Rupisi to show me, he said, a forest in which 

 small tsetses, in company with large, were extraordinarily abundant and trouble- 

 some in the rains. It proved to be the fringing forest I have described. The small 

 flies, he said, would follow one out of the forest, the big ones (doubtless brevipalpis) 

 often turned back on reaching its edge after humming and settling about one in 

 the forest. He described the attacks of the small flies as surreptitious. 



From four to four and a half miles on, near an outcrop of rock that perhaps 

 represented the extreme southern end of the Sitatongas, and already beside the 

 Buzi below the junction of the Mtshanedzi, we came on a great up-rooted tree Z^ 

 feet thick, lying head downwards in a donga, and beside it the rootlings of pigs. 

 Under it at a point at which it was seven inches from the ground, were found 9 empty 

 puparia of Glossina austeni, in sandy soil. The conditions were sandy, though 

 somewhat less so than on the Rupisi. 



The general country between and near these spots was open, and the grass was 

 more or less short with stretches of long grass. The chief savannah tree north of 

 the Rupisi was perhaps Terminalia sericea ; a Pterocarpus (near angolensis) also 

 occurred and in places much thicket of Bauhinia galpini and petersiana. Afterwards 

 Bauhinia reticulata came into evidence and, more and more, the upoza (Combretum 

 sp.), together with a general approximation to the conditions of the basalt suitable 

 only for morsitans and pallidipes. Along the rivers the dense forest wooding in 

 many places prevailed. 



There is much game in this corner of the country (Gowana's). Buffalo, sable 

 antelope, eland, Lichtenstein hartebeest and roan antelope are all present, also 

 a few wart-hogs, an alleged abundance of pigs and baboons, monkeys (C. pygerythrus 

 in the tree-savannah, C. albogularis in the thicker forest, as also much blue duiker), 

 waterbuck, reedbuck, and plenty of bushbuck and cane-rats. Vleis (not seen by 

 myself) are stated to be present, but not many. 



The one fly {austeni) taken by us bit the native who was giving my breeding flies 

 a feed from a goat just outside the edge of the heavy Rupisi wooding, and possibly 

 thereby exhibited a preference for man as against goat. 



Moisture and Rainfall. 



Morning mists, very wetting to the leaf, occur not infrequently in the dry season 

 between the Sitatongas and the British border, especially in the great river valleys. 

 (737) €2 



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