990 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
sitans by certain South African natives, was an imitation, or onomatopoeia, 
of this buzz.!. In my experience, Glossina palpalis, at any rate, has a perfectly 
noiseless flight and it alights or flies off without giving much warning to its 
victim. So far as I remember, the other species of Glossina, including G. mor- 
sitans, make no appreciable noise in flight. All tsetse-flies, however, make at 
times a high, shrill, singing noise, when resting, before or after feeding. It is 
possible that where G. morsitans is very abundant this singing of the resting 
flies might have been attributed to the numerous flying individuals. 
It has also sometimes been stated that the bite of tsetse-flies is unusually 
painful and that when a fly is infected with trypanosomes the spot where it 
bites will swell up and become inflamed. The immediate reaction to the bite 
I have personally found to be extremely variable; sometimes it was felt at 
once, but frequently it was entirely overlooked. I have reached the conclu- 
sion that many factors influence the reaction of man or animals to the bite, 
such as individual sensibility, the distance of the bite from a nerve, the tem- 
perature, the number of flies, ete. I have often observed G. palpalis completing 
its meal on the leg of a native without being in the least disturbed. As a rule, 
the subsequent reaction of the tissues surrounding the bite is very slight and 
of short duration; sometimes there is a little swelling and very rarely the bite 
is followed by considerable oedema, persisting for a long time. On one occasion 
near Nyangwe, in the Belgian Congo, in December 1910, my entire left hand 
was very badly swollen for several days following the bite of a single G. pal- 
palis. Yet there has never been any sign that I had become infected with 
trypanosomiasis. I am in agreement with Dr. J. Schwetz (1912, Rev. Zool. 
Afric., I, 3, p. 457) that the symptoms following the bite of a tsetse give no 
clue as to the possibility of infection with trypanosomes. 
Five species of tsetse-flies have been recorded thus far from Liberia, v2z., 
*Glossina palpalis (Robineau-Desvoidy), *G. fusca (Walker), *G. pallicera 
Bigot, *G. nigrofusca Newstead, and G. medicorum Austen. Four of these 
were found by the Harvard African Expedition.’ 
The genus is much more abundantly represented in the Belgian Congo by 
no less than thirteen species, as follows: *G. palpalis (Robineau-Desvoidy), 
G. newsteadi Austen (1929, Bull. Ent. Res., XX, 1, p. 1), *G. fusca (Walker), 
G. tabaniformis Westwood, *G. morsitans Westwood (with the race swbmorsitans 
Newstead), G. longipalpis Wiedemann, *G. pallidipes Austen, *G. brevipalpis 
Newstead, *G. fuscipleuris Austen, G. pallicera Bigot, *G. schwetzi Newstead and 
Evans, G. haningtont Newstead and Evans, and G. severint Newstead. 
1 The whole subject is discussed at length by Hegh (1929, loc. cit., pp. 19-21). Austen (19038, 
‘Monograph of the tsetse-flies,’ p. 1, footnote), however, writes more cautiously that the word tsetse 
‘Cowes its origin to the peculiar buzzing sound made by the fly on the wing or when commencing to suck 
blood.” 
2 Tn this and the following enumeration asterisks designate the species of which I have seen speci- 
mens from the territories under consideration. 
