A SINGULAR FLY.

Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1184, 12 June 1874, Page 4

A SINGULAR FLY.

One of the most extraordinary facts revealed to us by Dr Livingstone's explorations in Africa is that the high table lands in the interior, with its rich agricultural resources, its noble flora, its fine temperature, broad inland seas, and inexhaustible stores of mineral wealth, is rendered all but impenetrable to civilised man—certainly beyond all reach of colonisation—by one of the most apparently insignificant causes—a fly. This terrible insect is a little brown and yellow striped fly, called the Tsetze, scarcely larger than our common household pest, but whose sting is absolutely fatal. So deadly is its poison that it is said three or four flies will kill the largest ox. Soon after the bite, which gives little or no pain, staggering and blindness comes on the ox, the body swells to an enormous size, and in a few hours follows convulsions and death. And yet this deadly poison, under the effects of which the horse and ox, the sheep and dog, fall as if plague stricken, is harmless to man, to wild animals, to the pig, mule, ass, and goat. Here is an achievement of science that would bring glory to the discoverer —the discoverer of some antidote to the sting of this venomous fly, which would open the treasures of central Africa to the use of the world.