[To TIM EDITOR or THE ..SPEOPATOILI SIR { I have read
with interest the discussion, as far as it has gone, which was initiated by Mr. T. M. Hastings in your• issue of March 2nd on the subject of game preservation and the tsetse-fly.• I have no knowledge of the tsetse-fly
which conveys sleeping sickness; but of the other tsetse-Sy which attacks cattle, horses, donkeys, &o., and which Mr. E. N. Buxton alludes to, I have had a small experience. It may prove of interest in connexion with the theory that the " sleeping-sickness " tsetse-fly is dependent for its existence upon certain species of game to compare it in this respect with the " cattle-destroying " tsetse-fly. In the Transvaal some twenty-five years ago there was a very large belt of this " cattle-destroying " tsetse-fly. At that time herds of buffalo roamed over the veld. Gradually as the buffalo were killed off and driven away so did the tsetse-fly also disappear, until to-day it may be said that the tsetse-fly is quite extinct in the Transvaal, as is also the buffalo, while just across the border in Portuguese East Africa, where the buffalo is still extant, so is the tsetse-fly. Perhaps Mr. Hastings can supply some information as to whether the buffalo is usually an inhabitant of the districts of Africa where sleeping sickness is most
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