356 TSETSE FLIES 



abiding admiration. But what I would most 

 earnestly implore of them is patience yet awhile. 

 The epoch-making facts which they have brought 

 to light will lose nothing of their value by the 

 lapse of the time necessary to enable us properly 

 to appreciate them. Let us, therefore, not be 

 hasty, nor yet too drastic in our first applied 

 remedies, and, above all, let us be sure before we 

 adopt our preventive measures that they con- 

 stitute in very truth the only way out. Do not 

 condemn to extirpation even the meanest detail 

 of the African fauna until the blood of every 

 living creature containing it, from the eagle in the 

 zenith to the serpent in his hole, has been care- 

 fully examined, so that no small unsuspected host 

 continue unharmed whilst the great fauna are 

 ruthlessly slaughtered. 



I hold no brief for wild beasts beyond my 

 boundless admiration for them as one of the 

 most attractive and absorbing features of the 

 African landscape. It is indeed well within the 

 bounds of probability that I may never again see 

 in its wild state another African mammal ; but 

 while my voice is heard in connection with that 

 great continent wherein I have passed the best 

 years of my life, I shall raise it in defence of the 

 defenceless fauna until we know beyond question 

 that that fauna must go. 



Since the signature in 1900 by all the European 

 powers possessing Spheres of Influence in Africa 

 of a Convention for the protection of the fauna 

 of that continent, which, I believe, was largely 

 the humane idea of the late Sir Clement Hill, 



