68 
THE NEW AFRICA 
slightly bitten, and hastily isolated from further molestation, 
by a wash composed of ingredients only known to himself. 
The ‘ fly ’ poison is injected into an animal in the same 
manner as the mosquito bites, and leaves a small diffuse lump 
on the bitten spot, causing much local irritation, especially as 
the fly attacks the least exposed parts of the animal, where the 
skin is thin, and it cannot be driven away by the tail. The bite 
is much aggravated by contact with water, and it is a well- 
known fact that the early rains carry off all fly-bitten cattle. 
The bitten animal shows signs of great lassitude, its head swells, 
and the joints and limbs become stiff. At this stage a merciful 
bullet is advisable to forestall a death of general debility and 
asphyxia. On cutting the beast open, one finds the subcu¬ 
taneous tissue injected with a yellow serous fluid not unlike the 
result of some snake bites, and also the lungs injected. Beyond 
this I have not been able to investigate, as these episodes usually 
occur on a march when neither time nor opportunity is offered 
for scientific observation. 
The goats we had with us showed no signs of being affected 
by fly bite, and I feel safe in the assertion that they are 
impervious to this poison. To mankind and all wild beasts the 
bite is innocuous, although surprisingly unpleasant in its sting, 
equal in quality to that of a good healthy wasp or bee. To 
illustrate the violence of the bite, let me relate that on one 
occasion I had already sighted the rifle at a buffalo standing 
looking at me some thirty yards off, and was just in the act of 
pulling the trigger, when a tsetse fly settled on my hand, and 
the sting was so acute that I had not the nerve to pull the 
trigger, but had first to brush the fly off' and by the movement 
scared the buffalo away. 
The fly on the Pungwe river is, I think, slightly smaller and 
darker in hue than those on the Upper Zambesi or Chobe 
rivers. 
We had to pay the penalty of our day’s sport with the 
wildebeest, as our bearers, now full of meat to more than reple¬ 
tion, a condition of body always tending to indolence, and in this 
