ZOOLOGY 
3 6 7 
vines ; by the tsetse-fly on the horses and cattle with which we are attempting 
to open up Africa ; by the jigger, or burrowing flea, which may make whole 
nations lame ; by the mosquitoes which introduce all manner of diseases into 
the skin and render existence intolerable at all times in the low-lying parts of 
Africa, and, during the summer, in the northern regions of the globe ; by the 
blue-bottle fly which spreads blood-poisoning ; the “ fish ” insects which destroy 
our books and pictures ; the maddening sand-flies; the gad-flies ; the bed-bugs ; 
the fleas; the lice; the termites which mine our houses; the warrior ants 
which drive us out of them ; the tiny ants which get into our sugar and jam ; 
the ephemerides that rise from the river at night, extinguish an uncovered lamp, 
fall into our soup and permeate it with a filthy taste ; the kungu fly of Lake 
Nyasa which rises in choking clouds and simulates a fog; locusts that ravage 
continents and produce widespread famine ; beetles that bore into timber, that 
destroy hides, whose grubs eat away the roots of flowers and food plants ; 
innumerable moths and butterflies whose caterpillars rival the locusts in their 
destruction of crops ; bugs which suck the juices of valuable shrubs ; hornets 
which inflict an almost deadly sting on no provocation ; the thousand unnamed 
insect pests with which the gardener and agriculturist have to deal under the 
name of “ blight ” ; and last in the enumeration but not least in its horror, 
the cockroach, that foulest of all insects, the very sight of which in its mad 
malicious lustful flight on some hot breathless night in Africa or India round 
one’s room fills one with more abject terror and shuddering revulsion than 
the entry of any wild beast of our own class or human enemy or visitor from 
the other world ? Even in well-ordered England what precautions one has 
to take against the encroachments of insects! But in Africa beside this conflict 
the differences of opinion with slave traders and cannibals, the contention with 
lions and leopards as to the possession of domestic animals are incidents of 
a cheery rivalry with other forms of flesh and blood compared to this nightmare 
struggle with a class that knows no pity, that shares with us no feelings, and 
owns with us a community of origin so remote in its independent development 
that it might be the creation of another planet. It is surprising to my thinking 
that our asylums are not mainly filled with entomologists driven to dementia 
by the study of this horrible class ; on the contrary, however, by some sur¬ 
prising reversal of effect following cause, the study of insects appears to- 
produce mild spectacled men of regular habits, dull sobriety and calm optimism, 
just as clergymen are usually the authorities on spiders, and men of thin-lipped 
virtue affect the study of that most disproportionate development of generative 
energy, the earthworm. 
This exordium is intended to explain why in my brief allusions to the 
insects of British Central Africa I should speak in terms of almost unmitigated 
blame. 
Butterflies are not perhaps so striking in beauty of colouring as in West 
Africa, Madagascar, Tropical Asia, and South America. But as I have already 
said the beauty even of the most gorgeous butterflies is, in my opinion, trivial 
compared to that of an ordinary bird. 
The most interesting feature in some of them is mimicry of their sur¬ 
roundings. One butterfly frequently met with on the slopes of Zomba 
mountain offers the most perfect resemblance to a large green leaf when its 
wings are closed. The two pairs of folded wings meet together almost without 
a break in the line of contour, and the end of the slightly prolonged “ tail ” 
to the lower wings is apposed to the branch, thus imitating the stalk of 
