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is little time at disposal, but such periods of stress are of short duration. The fact is that at present medical officers do not consider entomological work part of their duty, and to get such work done there must be some inducement offered them. I have previously proposed the following, based upon that obtaining at present in the military service. In the West African Frontier Force no officer is entitled to leave Were this rulo until he has sent in some original work, map, report, itinerary, &c. applied to the medical service, and were cach medical officer before he went on leave required to send in an original report upon some subject, zoological, entomological, pathological, or botanical, &c., I believe the necessary inducement would be supplied, especially were these reports sent home for submission to an independent authority, such as the Tropical Research Fund Board. Of course, a great deal of rubbish would be written, but some good work would be done. Further, those who showed industry and ability would Le singled out from those whose aim was to do no more than their daily routine work. In the first five years of service such original work might be insisted upon as a qualification to entitle a medical officer to his annual increment of pay. At the least he should understand that it was likely to be an aid to his promotion.
Having induced the medical officers to collect, what disposal should be made of their captures? I think all specimens should be sent to the Lagos Laboratory for identification. Here the place and date of the capture would be recorded, the known separated from the unknown, and the latter sent home to an expert for identification. Thus the sending home of rubbish would be avoided, an ordered record kept of range and seasonal prevalence, and a representative collection accumulated, by means of which, after a few years, almost all specimens could be identified upon the spot by comparison with named specimens in the laboratory collection.
I cannot see how any really useful work is to be done without the formation of such a collection at Lagos, for on the West Coast one is dealing with an almost unknown fauna, and therefore books of reference are not of the same value as aids to identification as they are elsewhere. Such a collection having been made, all medical officers or other officials who took an interest in the subject could be shown the indigenous insects at the laboratory by some one who could explain the method of search, demonstrate the way to use a net, transfer specimens when taken to collecting box, kill, and set up the specimens. These things are unfortunately not taught at the Tropical Schools, and unless a man has collected, say, butterflies in his youth, he knows nothing about them, and the specimens he may collect are too damaged to be useful. Further, there is little use of asking men to collect, unless they be provided with net, boxes, pins, &c. In my own case, I had to send home and get out those things at my own expense when I received the Principal Medical Officer's circular asking me to collect in 1906.
Such things could be issued by the laboratory to intending collectors and returned to the laboratory when the collector went on leave.
I am told that, according to the rules of the British Museum, the duty of the officials in charge of the different collections is to keep their collection in such order that it may be used for purposes of identification by the public, but that it is not their duty to do the identification for the public. At present, therefore, specimens sent to the Museum are merged in the general collection, and the collector receives the thanks of the Museum authorities, but is extremely unlikely to receive any information more than this acknowledgment. Under these circumstances the ardour of most collectors is damped, and even should he pay the Museum a visit on his return home he sees there a bewildering mass of specimens, all very similar, among which he is usually unable to recognise his specimens. I am, of course, supposing that he is a collector only, not an expert. What such a man wants is to be told at once the most elementary facts about his captures, such as the family, sub-family, or genus, ard he wants this told him one or two at a time, not in an aggregate that he cannot digest. Thus his early mistakes are rectified one by one, and he feels that he is le irning on each occasion some useful facts that he can probably make use of the following day. Such work can be carried out only when there is a collection on the spot for reference.
I think I have touched upon the points of most importance, and I hope my views may meet with your approval.
Yours, &c.,
W. M. GRATIAM.
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No. 2.
RESEARCH IN ENTOMOLOGY, ESPECIALLY IN RELATION TO DISEASE AND COLONIAL DEVELOPMENT.
Within the last few years there has been a very remarkable increase in our knowledge of the rôle played by insects in relation to all sides of human activity, and especially in our knowledge of the part both insects and arachnids take in conveying diseases caused by animal and vegetable (bacteria) parasites both to man, to the domesticated animals, which are in most cases essential to the welfare of man, and to the crops upon which he largely feeds.
The importance of insects and ticks in relation to the spread of disease in man and animals is now widely recognized. The malaria parasite is conveyed to man
by anopheline mosquitoes, that of yellow fever by Stegomyia fasciata, likewise a species of mosquito. Plague in man and animals is in most instances conveyed by fleas. The trypanosomes which cause sleeping sickness in man, and nagana in horses, cattle, and other animals, are conveyed from host to host by flies belonging to the genus Glossina. African relapsing fever in man, a fatal disease in poultry. redwater and east coast fever in cattle, malignant jaundice in dogs, biliary fever in horses, and heartwater in sheep and goats, are all important diseases which are transmitted by different species of ticks.
Further, apart from disease in man and his cattle, there is the widest field, at present almost unworked, in Central Africa for investigation into the life-histories and habits of the numerous insects which prey upon, and not infrequently annihilate, the crops upon which humanity is largely dependent for its daily food. The success or failure of the colonisation by white people of such countries as Uganda will almost certainly be profoundly influenced by the insect enemies to their crops, and it is of the highest importance that the necessary machinery for dealing with them should be in working order, or great loss and profound disappointment in the resources of the country will ensue. The names of the insect pests are too numerous and too well known to need mentioning, but it is worthy of remark that, while a sound and efficient series of investigations has been established in South Africa and in Egypt, similar enquiries in Central Africa, the northern and southern portions of which are already being colonised, are yet to be made.
It is not too much to say that the cause of the almost complete closure of Africa -lying as it does at the very foot of Europe-until quite recent times, with the exception of a narrow littoral fringe, has been the existence of disease and death- carrying insects and ticks.
On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that many insects are beneficial to man. More than one ladybird, belonging to the genera l'edalia and Orcus, intro- duced from Australia, has done much to free the Californian orange trees of that destructive pest, the San José scale, Aspidiotus perniciosus, and Dr. Sharp states: "If anything were to exterminate the enemies of Hemiptera, we, ourselves, should probably be starved in the course of a few months." If possible, it is important to find out what insects are helpful to man in any new country before the advent of large numbers of colonists upsets, as it is bound to do, the balance of power in the animal world.
It would thus seem most urgent, if we are to make our Central African colonies habitable and profitable, and, in a degree, healthy, for white men, that increased attention should be paid to the insect fauna, whether it be inimical or helpful to man, and, in the main, as the former play the larger part in the problem, I would suggest that a beginning should be made with them.
The work, in my opinion, falls under two heads, (a) work in the Colonies, on the spot. (b) work that can be done in England.
(a) With regard to the work in the Colonies; there could hardly be too many collectors, but, as a beginning, I think a start might be made by two trained naturalists. Their duties would be threefold :---
(i.) To form collections of all sorts of insects and ticks, but, at any rate, at first, especially of those which come in direct relation to man, to domesticated cattle, and to cultivated crops.
(ii) To observe and note as completely as possible the life-histories, habits,
and habitats of the insects or ticks collected.
(iii) To interest the resident officials in entomology; to induce them also to collect and to teach them how to "set" or preserve the insects and ticks for transportation to England.
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