﻿306 S. A. NEAVE — NOTES ON THE BLOOD-SUCKING 



In many places along the coast belt of British East Africa the natural bush 

 is now overwhelming the many large native plantations which have been deserted, 

 and this species, and also G. brevipalpis, are almost certainly increasing and 

 extending their range. I am informed that, in consequence of this, it is now no 

 longer possible to keep cattle in many places where they flourished a generation 

 ago. 



G-lossina austeni, Newst. 



I was fortunate in capturing a few specimens of this recently described 

 and remarkable little species. I first took a single female at Voi, British 

 East Africa, on 9th February 1912, and subsequently two individuals of 

 each sex in the Uchweni forest, near Witu, February 25th-27th, in the same 

 Protectorate. 



The Entomological Research Committee have also received a single female 

 from the Juba River from Dr. C. L. Chevallier, from whence came the type, and a 

 male, taken on Mombasa Island on November 22nd, 1911, by Dr. W. J. Radford, 

 Senior Medical Officer at Mombasa. 



In spite of its small size this species is readily recognisable in life by the 

 bright rufous colour of the upper surface of the abdomen. So marked is this 

 colour, that from a short distance I mistook the first specimen I saw for n small 

 individual of Tabanus par. 



I have necessarily had only a very limited experience of this species. It 

 occurs in company with G. pallidipes and G. brevipalpis, though it seems to 

 require more heavily forested country than that in which those species sometimes 

 are found. It would appear to be confined to the coast belt in British East Africa, 

 where it evidently has a fairly wide distribution. It would not be surprising, 

 however, to hear of its existence in the coast belt in German East Africa also. 

 Up to the present it has not been captured at a greater elevation than about 

 1,500 feet above sea-level. 



G-lossina palpalis, Rob. Desv. 



The habits of this species are now so widely known that it is perhaps not 

 necessary to consider them at any length. As I have pointed out before,* the 

 distribution of this tsetse in the main coincides with that of other insects of the 

 tropical West Coast, and it is therefore strictly not an East African species. 

 Since however political boundaries do not concern themselves with faunistic 

 ones, G. palpalis occurs in several of the East African countries under 

 consideration, viz. : — part of N.E. Rhodesia within the Congo basin, the 

 basin of Lake Tanganyika, and of the great lakes of Uganda and of the Upper 

 Nile. Everywhere in this region G. palpalis is confined to the shadier portions 

 of lake shores or river banks at elevations under 4,000 feet. In other words, the 

 climate is nowhere sufficiently humid to enable it to exist at any appreciable 

 distance from a permanent body of water. I do not know of any authentic 

 record of its occurring at over 4,000 feet, even at the equator, and the further 

 from the equator, the lower the limit seems to be, as might be expected. 



* Journ. of Econ. Biol. IV, pp. 109-114 (1909), 



