"I like the ladybird and the chalk-blue butterfly."
"I see you're a sentimentalist. You might keep those. But all the rest I would wipe out utterly. I wish that we could wipe out the tsetse as easily as one can wipe out the germ-carrying mosquitoes."
"Has it been tried?"
"No. Well. It may have been. But in the mosquito there is a well-marked grub stage, and in the tsetse there isn't. It is so difficult to get at the chrysalids satisfactorily."
"What do the tsetses live upon? Do you mind all my questions?"
"No. Go ahead. But it must be rather boring to you. They live on anything they can get, like the commissioners who study them."
"But why do they live near water?"
"Oh, that? Some think that they suck the crocodiles; but the general opinion is that they go for air-breathing, fresh-water fish. The theory is this. In the dry season the fish have very little water. The rivers dry up, or very nearly dry up. I'm not talking of rivers like the Zambesi and the Congo, of course. Well. They dry up, leaving water-courses of shallow pools joined together by trickles. The fish are perfectly horrible creatures. They burrow into the mud of the shallows, and stay there till the rains. I suppose they keep their snouts out of the mud, in order to breathe. It is thought that the tsetses feed upon their snouts. It may not be true. Jolly interesting if it is, don't you think? Look here, excuse me if I smoke. Tell me. What is it which interests you so much in sleeping sickness? It seems so queer that you should be interested."
"I met with accounts of it not long ago, at a time when various causes had made me very sensitive to impressions. I don't know whether you ever feel that what is happening to you is part of a great game divinely ordained?"
Lionel shook his head. His look became a shade more medical.