The study of Dipterous insects in Kenya Colony has been restricted, to a large extent, to the Culicidae and their relation to malaria, and to the Tabanidae and the genus Glossina in connection with trypanosomiasis, the non-bloodsucking Diptera having received but little consideration.

“ Blowflies ” or “ maggot-flies ” are by no means uncommon in the Colony, and evidences of myiasis in its various forms are numerous. Symes & Roberts (1932) cite instances of the larvae of Sarcophaga haemorrhoidalis and of Lucilia sericata in the exposed brain substance of a woman ; and of Chrysomyia bezziana in an ulcer on the foot. Cordylobia anthropophaga, parasitic in the skin of man and other animals, is common, and Auchmeromyia luteola (in reality a blood-sucker in its larval stage) is distributed from the coast to the southern boundary of Abyssinia. The “ sheep nasal fly ” is extremely abundant, and many other larvae of Oestrus species have been recorded from game in the Colony.

Wounds, ulcers and sores in natives and in animals are often infested with maggots. I have seen, on several occasions, maggots in the ears, and in sores under the eyes, of native children, and in leg-wounds of native labourers. Still more frequently have I observed maggots in wounds of animals ; they occur at the bases of distorted, and in the scars of broken, horns, in the lesions caused by tick-bites, in injured eyes, and in the soiled fleece of sheep. Animals on the point of death are often attended by myriads of sarcophagous flies, the vast numbers of Chrysomyia marginalis in particular presenting an extraordinary sight.