PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Te Tz Ti
6T
Reference :-
C.O. 885
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
20 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
12
he collection of blood-sucking insects. The Museum recognised very fully the connection with diseases and blood-sucking insects, and they had issued various reports on the subject. He specially reminded the meeting that the Museum had published four volumes in connection with mosquitoes, and they had also published a catalogue of blood-sucking insects and tsetse fly, and they had in the Press a catalogue of the African blood-sucking flies. In 1899 one of the Museum assistants was granted three months' leave of absence, and he went with Major Ross to Sierra Leone for the purpose of making investigations on the malaria question. It was thus unnecessary to say anything more to show that the Museum had been fully alive to the necessity of the collection of facts with regard to these insects. It was hardly necessary to observe that they had been handicapped by the want of sufficient staff to deal with the results that had been obtained. The Museum was, by Act of Parliament, the national repository of specimens which were collected by anyone in the service of the Government; and there was the remaining point that the Museum authorities felt that if any collections were to be made by officers in the public service, the Museum had the right to receive the first choice of all the speci- mens that were collected. He thought it possible that a bureau of the kind that had been suggested might make arrangements which would interfere with the exist- ing arrangements by which the Museum received collections from officials in all parts of the British Empire. The Museum would attach importance to the preserva. tion of the specimens of new species that were collected, and it was important that they should be collected in one institution. It was particularly important that the specimens should not be left abroad in tropical countries, because they quickly deteri- orated. He said that the Museum were always quite willing to part with duplicate specimens. From an economical point of view it was highly desirable that the possibility of making use of the existing Museum should be very fully considered. They also had the laboratory, which was one of the most essential things if any bureau was started. An entomological laboratory was a very serious matter, and it could not be got together without a large expenditure of money. The British Museum had such a laboratory, and in addition they had at their disposal funds which could be utilised.
Mr. SHIPLEY said that he would like to put himself right with regard to the bulletin. When he said "swift" he did not mean scrap work. The result should be swiftly published, and not laid up for months or years.
The VICE-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Antrobus, Assistant Under Secretary of State for the Colonies), in thanking the meeting, on Lord Crewe's behalf, for coming to the Colonial Office, said that he feared some of the members had come at great personal inconvenience. The Colonial Office considered that the matter they had been discussing was a very important one, and they were quite alive to the importance of these small insects. He mentioned the special interest taken by himself and Mr. Read in all matters connected with tropical Africa. He did not think there need be any fear on the part of the British Museum that their interests would not be properly looked after. He thought there was general agreement on the importance of the subject, and the lines on which something should be done. Full details would have to be worked out in further Conferences.
11379
No. 7.
COLONIAL OFFICE to TREASURY.
[Answered by No. 10.]
Downing Street, 17 April, 1909.
SIR,
I AM directed by the Earl of Crewe to request you to inform the Lords Com. missioners of the Treasury that he has had under his consideration the question of entomological investigation in its relation to the diseases of men and other animals and of plants in the British Colonies and Protectorates in West and East Africa.
2. During the last ten years much has been done to increase the knowledge of the cause and cure of tropical diseases. Arrangements have been made for the proper instruction of medical officers serving in the tropics; research institutes have been established in various Colonies and have already produced a large quantity of useful work on the medical side of tropical diseases; numerous scientific expedí-
13
tions have been sent to Africa and elsewhere and have brought back a considerable amount of new information; while the study of the germs which produce tropical diseases and the search for curative drugs are being energetically pursued by somie of the most distinguished men of science of the day.
3. While all this work has been, or is being, carried out on the medical side of tropical diseases, comparatively little has been done on the side of entomology, which is certainly not less important.
4. The majority of tropical diseases, such as malaria, sleeping sickness, yellow fever, plague, &c., are conveyed by some kind of insect, and with the extermination of the insect the disease itself would also come to an end.
5. It is true that, even under present conditions, some efforts are being made to deal effectively with the insects which are the cause of so much mischief, by draining swamps, treating standing pools of water with kerosene oil, providing insect-proof houses, &c.; but, in some cases, these remedies are only nioderately effective, in others their cost is prohibitive, while in others, again, no remedy has been attempted or suggested. In fact, the present methods are the crude or costly methods suggested by a science at present in its infancy.
6. What has been said above with regard to human diseases applies with almost equal force to the diseases of animals and plants in the tropics, and (to quote one instance only) their Lordships will remember that they were recently asked to sanction an expenditure of several thousand pounds in East Africa in the. erection of barbed-wire fencing to prevent the spread of east coast fever, an insect-borne disease, among the cattle of the settlers.
7. It is scarcely necessary to adduce further arguments in proof of the import- ance of this question, but, as showing the attitude of those best fitted to express an opinion on the matter, the following extract from an address delivered by Sir Lauder Brunton, M.D., F.R.S., at the opening of the winter session of the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1907, may be of interest :-
46
There really ought to be established by Government a Chair, or still better an Institute, of Scientific Entomology, well endowed and having attached to it a number of men who could carry on original investigations. Such a Chair or Institute, if thoroughly well endowed and having money lavishly expended upon it, would repay the expenditure a thousandfold, for the study of tropical diseases is becoming to a great extent identified with the study of the insects which transmit them."
8. Lord Crewe is well aware, having regard to the financial condition of some of the British Colonies and Protectorates in West and East Africa, and the various other pressing services which have to be provided for in others, that there is no present prospect of subsidising entomological investigation on the liberal scale advocated by Sir Lauder Brunton; and he has been at some pains, therefore, to ascertain whether the object in view could not in a large measure be obtained by a moderate annual outlay of (say) £2.000 a year, of which one-half would be provided by the self-supporting Colonies in West Africa and the other half contributed from Imperial funds on behalf of the Exchequer-aided Protectorates in West and East Africa.
9. His Lordship accordingly invited the leading authorities in this branch of science including, among others, representatives of the Natural History Depart- ment of the British Museum, of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, of the Schools of Tropical Medicine of London and Liverpool, and the Royal College of Science, Dublin-to confer with him at the Colonial Office on the 26th of March. As a result of the discussion which then took place, Lord Crewe is able to place before their Lordships a scheme which appears to him practical and economical, and which he hopes will meet with their approval.
10. Assuming that a total sum of £2,000 a year would be available, it was considered that one-half of this amount should be devoted to work in Africa and one-half to work in the United Kingdom.
11. The sum of £1,000 available for work in Africa would be utilised in providing salaries, passages, &c., for two well-trained entomologists, one of whom would be employed in West, and the other in East, Africa.
12.
The duties of these naturalists would be threefold :-
(1) 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 and domesticated cattle.