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An Examination of the Tsetse Problem in North Mossurise, Portuguese East Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 July 2009

Extract

In June 1918, I arranged to carry out a preliminary investigation of the habits and distribution of the tsetse-flies in the northern portion of the Mossurise district for a maximum period of three months on the understanding that the Mozambique Company would defray the general expenses of the expedition.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1921

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References

page 319 note * These descriptions of woodland types are necessarily greatly condensed, but their recognition will be facilitated by reference to the accompanying illustrations.

page 325 note * My rocks, identified by Mr. Mennell as mica granite, gneissose granite and Muscovite granite or gneiss, show more or less foliation, and the area appears to be that, east of the Sitatongas, described by Theile and Wilson as metamorphic. The general characteristics are those of the granite.

page 335 note * Not that this was allowed to continue actively under Umzila. He decreed “There must be no more war. We are the only King (Si'nkosi sodwa)!”

page 346 note * Mrs. Lawrence, writing for her husband well on in November and sending me flies, speaks of the pleasant and cooling effects of the first light rains—“but” (she adds) “the tsetses! they are abundant.” Tsetses had reappeared with the return of the shade, but the advent of the rains would seem to have led either to their freer breeding out or (as I think, by making more general the conditions under which they could exist in comfort or safety) to their freer dispersal from their breeding centres.

page 358 note * Against the obvious suggestion that the barrier could be narrow must be placed the possibility, to be referred to below, that females as well as males do not dismount readily in uncongenial country once they have allowed themselves to be carried well into it. This point needs testing also.

page 358 note † I see from my journal of that time that the tsetses “swarmed and were very irritating.” Game was not quite absent, but, with the exception of duikers, was very scarce, having left this unburned country for the green patches on the basalt that had been burnt earlier.

page 368 note * The presence of the birds at this spot was noted practically daily; they were only continuously watched on about two days.

page 369 note * The existence of soft pockets of earth, breaking the harder crust under most of the logs examined, constitutes indirect evidence also of the scratching of some animal or animals in these places.

page 375 note * I have tried boring, both by auger and by down-slanting strokes with a narrow native axe, but find that this leaves unaffected areas of bark between the holes and kills only particular branches, the poison (as might be expected) taking effect in a vertical, not horizontal direction.

page 375 note † Later information suggests that the Sabi even now offers a safe route.

page 377 note * To check radiation, introduce shade conditions inimical to the fly and spoil the game’s early grazing, also if the trees that succeeded were of a definitely “drying” type, like Eucalypts, to help to dry the ground. Such a measure, even if locally successful, would doubtless be too expensive to use except under special circumstances.