Volume XII 
DECEMBER, 1920 
No. 4 
ON SOME NEW HAEMOGREGARINES FROM BRITISH 
EAST AFRICA. 
By CECIL A. HOARE, B.Sc. 
(From the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Petrograd and the 
National Institute for Medical Research , London.) 
(With Plate XVIII.) 
At the beginning of 1917 Professor V. Dogiel kindly handed over to me, for 
scientific treatment, a series of blood-films taken from different Amphibia, 
Reptilia, and Mammalia by the Expedition of Professors V. Dogiel and 
I. Sokolov to British East Africa in 1914. The films were examined by me 
for blood parasites, with the result that, of 27 animals, two different species 
of Bufo and two snakes proved to be infected. The blood parasites were 
represented by haemogregarines exclusively. The blood-films had been fixed 
on cover-slips by the dry method, and preserved in that condition for nearly 
three years. Altogether, I had at my disposal only 24 slips with blood-films 
taken from the peripheral blood of the infected animals. 
For staining, I adopted the Romanovsky-Giemsa solution, Delafield’s 
haematoxylin combined with aqueous eosin, and Pappenheim’s combination 
of Jenner’s stain and the Romanovsky-Giemsa solution. On account of the 
length of time during which the preparations had been preserved in a dry 
condition, the staining could not have been expected to produce quite favour¬ 
able results. Thus, the stroma of the erythrocytes when stained with Giemsa’s 
solution assumed a light blue, or greenish colour, instead of pink; the structure 
of the protoplasm in the parasites was not distinctly exhibited, their nuclei 
also being often hardly visible. 
As regards the hosts of the parasites, it is only in one case that the specific 
name can be stated, namely in a Puff-adder, Bitis gabonica, whereas the 
second snake, and the two representatives of the Anura in which parasites 
have been found, will be defined only after the preparations of these animals 
are received from Alexandria, where the Expedition was compelled to leave 
the bulky materials collected, owing to the outbreak of war 1 . In due time 
it is hoped that the hosts will be named in a supplementary note to this paper. 
Notwithstanding all these unfavourable conditions, the material presented 
some interesting data. 
1 V. Dogiel and I. Sokolov. The route and brief description of the travel. Sci. Res. Zool. 
Exped. to British East Africa and Uganda in 1914, Vol. i, Petrograd, 1916. 
Parasitology xii 01 
