Illustrations of African blood-sucking flies other than mosquitoes and tsetse-flies / by Ernest Edward Austen.

Ernest Edward Austen

Date:: 1909

Credit: Illustrations of African blood-sucking flies other than mosquitoes and tsetse-flies / by Ernest Edward Austen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$received since the arrival of the type of T. macrops, more than sixty years ago. Tabanus tceniola attacks both human beings and domestic animals. According to Surcouf,* a French lieutenant of Zouaves named Chapin states that its bites are fatal to camels in French Congo. In the Kharga Oasis, Upper Egypt, where it occurs from May to September, T. tceniola is also said to kill camels, though according to the late Dr. H. H. Baker, formerly of the Corporation of Western Egypt, Limited, the statement needs verification. Writing from Qara, Kharga Oasis, on December 5th, 1907, Dr. Baker said “ With regard to the dis¬ semination of disease by the flies \T. tceniola, Pal. de Beauv.], the evidence that I have been able to obtain up to the present is not very strong. Among the natives this Oasis is considered an unhealthy place for camels, and they generally attribute its unhealthiness to the flies. Although frequently visited by Bedouin caravans, no camels are bred or kept permanently in the Oasis by the natives. Bedouins who have been obliged to keep camels here for some time, owing to want of grazing ground, are said to have lost considerable numbers of them. “ The fly undoubtedly attacks camels, and whenever it bites draws a bead of blood and causes considerable irritation. Of the camels belonging to this Corporation which have died here, only one can be said to afford any evidence that the flies were the cause of death. In this case a camel, apparently in good health, was attacked by five or six flies : on the following day it was ill, and it died the day after. A native, who was bitten at the same time while catching specimens for me, was ill for three or four days. This took place some distance from our headquarters, and I did not see the dead camel. The fly is very rarely met with at our headquarters, but camels working in parts of the Oasis where the fly is common do not seem to be any more unhealthy than those working here. In those camels whose bodies I have examined after death, the post-mortem appearances have been so various that I do not think that the cause of death can have been the same in all cases.” It is obvious that the death of the camel two days after being bitten, in the case * Archives de Parasitologie, T. XI., p. 472 (1907).$