Notes and Events.

Manawatu Herald, 18 May 1893, Page 3

Notes and Events.

Mr Frederick C. Selous is now preparing, in London, another book, about his travels and his sport in in Central Africa. He has been interviewed by Mr Stead,, who has a character sketch in the last number of the, Meviko of 'Reviews which is very, interesting. The best specimens of wild animals that are to be found in the collection at the South Kensington museum wsre shot by Mr Selous in the wilds, and their skins sent home. The Cape Museum has received from him a valuable collection of butterflies. Mr Selous, the traveller and geographer is , a true all-round naturalist, and is just as eager in pursuit of a moth as he in in the, shooting of an elephant or the hunting of a lion. Though not a ' pledged abstainer, in all his wanderings he has never taken with him even a medicine bottle of brandy or of other spirits, From his youth up he has never tasted beer or wine or any other intoxicant, except that during a dinner party he just touches a glass out of courtesy. 'When he caters for himself, he drinks nothing but tea, and tea he will drink at every meal. For forty years he has been an inveterate tea drinker, with the result his nerves are like steel, and he can face the charge of a trumpeting elephant with imperturbable sang frold. He upsets the popular fallacy that tea has an injurious effect upon the nerves. ; • Shooting was, apparently so easy, that instead of killing animals outright, they were wounded and then . driven back to the waggons to receive the coup de grace, so that it might be butchered close to the kitchen ! The reviewer says, " but this is, of course, so highly convenient that no one can wonder at its adoption.!" We get an interesting account of the tsetze fly in this narrative. ' Hunting on horseback in Africa is only possible outside the fly: region. The tsetze fly, that stings man and beast, only tortures man, but kills the horses. But for this fly the elephant would probably be as extinct as the dodo, for it is one of the paradoxes of nature that the largest of animals owes its existence to one of the smallest, The tsetze is about the size of the common horse-fly. Its body is dull gray, with pinkish bars. With a long probe that can pierce through the flannel, it drinks the blood man and beast. Men only feel one bit? in ten, like the sting of a wasp ; the other nine are not much more than flea bites ; but horses and cattle weaken and die. Hence the fly country is a preserve of large game, where they can only be hunted on foot. The tsetze, however., depends for his existence upon thelbuffalo, in whose dung he lays his eggs. Where the buffalo roam yotrhave the tsetze. Clear out the buffalo and the fly vanishes. Thus, buffalo and tsetze form the rampart of the elephant.