154 First Report on Economic Zoology. 
To The Marquess of Lansdowne, K.G. 
Entebbe, Uganda, 
2Wi September , 1901. 
My Lord, — I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your 
Lordship’s despatch No. 190 of July 20th, with enclosures regarding the 
question of the existence of the Tsetse-fly in connection with the preser- 
vation of the Buffalo, and in reply to submit the following remarks, in so 
far as my own experience has taught me, on this vexed question. 
I may say at once that I am firmly of the opinion that in East Africa 
the existence of the Tsetse-fly was never in any way connected with the 
presence of the Buffalo more than any other species of game. 
I first met with the true Tsetse, in any great numbers, and consequently 
suffered much from their needle-like bite, in German East Africa, about 
eighty miles inland from Saadani, in February, 1886. 
At that time impala, hartebeest, zebras, and warthogs were found in 
large numbers, also a few sable antelopes, but there were no Buffaloes 
anywhere in the vicinity of my shooting grounds. 
In 1887 I again found this fly in great numbers in a small patch of 
thick bush, about a mile and a half long and three quarters of a mile wide, 
about ten miles west of Taveita. 
In this bush which projected from the forest I certainly found buffaloes 
occasionally, but as a rule they preferred to lie up for the day in the thick 
and cooler forest, in which there were no Tsetse-flies. 
The bush in question was a favourite resort of impalas, and a small 
dik-dik (Modoqua), the latter in great numbers, and also a few bush-bucks 
and waterbuck. At that time (1887) Buffaloes may be said to have swarmed 
in the vicinity of Tareita, but I never saw a Tsetse-fly in this one 
particular patch of bush. 
Later on, in 1888-89 and 1890, the fly was met with, also in great 
numbers, along the old caravan road from about two miles south of the 
Tsavo river, as far as Kibwezi. Between these two points there were practi- 
cally no Buffalo, but a great number of dik-dik and a few impala. The 
flies and the small game are still there, but there are certainly no Buffaloes. 
In 1891-2, after rinderpest had carried off nearly all the Buffaloes (at 
least 90 per cent.) throughout East Africa, Mr. Rogers, the present sub- 
commissioner of the Tunaland province, and myself found the Tsetse-fly 
existing in considerable numbers in a narrow belt of forest, not more than 
a mile wide, between Mkonumbi and Witu, and we were told by the natives 
that the G alias, when driving cattle to Larnu for sale, always drove them 
through the forest by night, and that the herdsmen carried smoking 
firebrands to keep the flies off. 
With the exception of a few bushbuck and duykers, there was no game 
in the vicinity of this belt of forest. 
These four places are the only areas, the first and third ones only 
being of any considerable extent, in which I have myself met with the 
true Tsetse-fly, and yet, until they were decimated by rinderpest, Buffaloes 
were more or less common throughout East Africa, and perhaps in no 
part of the Continent were they ever more plentiful than the Masai 
country between Kilimanjaro and Lake Baringo, Mau Plateau, and 
Turkwell. Throughout the whole of this vast area the Tsetse was, and is, 
non-existent. 
