[To sus Esrres or ram "BreorMTOs."]
Stn,—No doubt a great deal has still to be learnt with.regard to the connexion of tsetse-fly with sleeping sickness, but at the same time much must have been found out during the last two years or so, and it would be interesting to know whether the fact still remains established that a tsetse is the transmitter of the sleeping sickness as the mosquito is of malaria. If so, we must try to get rid of the tsetse just as we do of the mosquito. Moreover, there is not much time to wait. The sleeping sickness is well established on Tanganyika now, and no one who knows the Central African natives—I have spent the best part of sixteen years among them myself— can have any hopes that any measures of quarantine or hospital treatment will succeed in preventing it from spreading. The native who is not accustomed to Europeans is afraid of hospitals and doctors, and would rather die in the bush than go near them. There is no doubt whatever now, I think, that the particular species of tsetse which produces cattle sickness can be got rid of by getting rid of the game,—the question which remains to be solved is whether the other species is Subject to 'the same law. If it is, and there is no other way of getting rid of it, I submit that the proper conclusion to Come to would be to destroy the game over those areas where the fly is known to exist. The experiment I propose would prove this, and it need not be tried over a very large area to start with. In the meantime we are being threatened with a Scourge to which a little cattle sickness is nothing. Since you were good enough to open your columns to a corre- spondence on the subject last year the Government have decided to do away with one of the British Central Afritan game reserves and considerably diminish the area of another. Last year the official position was' that " there was no 'reason to expect" the sleeping sickness. I do not know whether it still remains the official view, but possibly this second corre spondence may induce them to take some steps towards 'what may quite possibly prove to be the only way of getting rid of the sleeping sickness.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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