10 J. W. SCOTT MACFIE — THE DISTKIBUTION OE GLOSSINA 



in the eastern than in the western division ; in some places, as. for instance, on 

 the River Noako, they are a serious inconvenience. 



Along the northern border of this division, from Patigi to Lafiagi and on to 

 Zumbufu, runs the main caravan highway through the province, and during the 

 dry season a constant succession of droves of cattle passes along this road on the 

 way to the Coast. The herdsmen of the north have not yet adopted the facilities 

 offered by the railway for transport, and still frankly prefer the slow but familiar 

 method of driving their beasts hundreds of miles by road. Many of the herds 

 come from Kano and even more distant regions, and the toll that they pay by 

 the wayside must be immense. As they pass through Ilorin province they must 

 trek, between Patigi and Zumbufu, through country infested with G. submorsitans, 

 in which the local herdsmen have found it impossible to rear cattle ; * that many 

 of their beasts sicken in consequence and have to be slaughtered is only too 

 certain. In Ilorin town, for instance, which is reached some days after leaving 

 the eastern division, large numbers of sick animals are butchered, and, on making 

 an examination of their blood, I found that the majority were suffering from 

 trypanosomiasis. In most cases the species of trypanosome was T. vivax. It is 

 probable, therefore, that the animals had been infected prior to their entry into 

 Ilorin province, for, according to Sir David Bruce and his collaborators on the 

 Sleeping Sickness Commission in Uganda,! the average incubation-period of 

 T. vivax in cattle is eighteen days, and the average duration of the disease 

 89 days, As the cattle slaughtered in Ilorin were often in an advanced stage of 

 trypanosomiasis, these figures would necessitate dating back the infection to a 

 time long before they crossed the Niger. The Nigerian strain may not, however, 

 be identical with that of Uganda, and may possibly have a shorter period of 

 incubation. In horses, at any rate, the onset appears to be rapid, for I have seen 

 a pony in an advanced stage of the disease 14 days after the earliest possible 

 date of infection, and another which showed undoubted symptoms only four days 

 after entering tsetse country. 



Unlike the western division, which is well stocked with cattle, the eastern 

 division possesses no Fulani herds, excepting in the extreme westerly portion of 

 the Oke Odde district, in an area near the River Oyi, bounded to the east by a 

 line running from Famali to Oke Odde, and southwards as far as Ora. In the 

 Annual Medical Report on Northern Nigeria for the year ending 31st December 

 1910, Dr. M. Cameron Blair, Senior Sanitary Officer, wrote: "In Northern 

 Nigeria we fortunately possess, apart altogether from scientific observation, a 

 very good rough-and-ready means of determining the distribution of tsetse-flies 

 at any given part of the year. The Fulani, over the greater part of the 

 Protectorate .... possess most of the cattle in the country .... For 

 centuries these people have been in the habit of wandering all over the 

 country in pursuit of pasture for their cattle and other live-stock. Apart 

 altogether from the question of the absolute presence or absence of water, these 

 people avoid certain parts of the country at certain seasons, and shun other 



* An enterprising herdsman recently attempted to settle near Lafiagi. In September, shortly 

 before I left Ilorin, I heard that his cattle were dying off, thus once more proving the unsuita- 

 bility of this district for Fulani herds. 



f Reports of the Sleeping Sickness Commission of the Royal Society, no. xi. 



