ANIMALS AND MAN 35 



Mites, Ticks, and Centipedes. Not only do some of these 

 transfer to man the organisms causing diseases, such as 

 African relapsing fever, the river fever of Japan, and 

 probably the Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but others 

 create distempers on their own account : itch, caused by 

 the burrowing of the itch-mite in the skin, is by no means 

 a rare complaint in this country, and many must have 

 suffered in hot summer fields from the attentions of the 

 tiny scarlet " harvest-bug." Furthermore, many are parasitic 

 upon and harmful to domestic animals, including horses, 

 cattle, sheep, and poultry. 



Of the larger disease-carriers none more deserves 

 attention than the Rat, which shares in the spread of 

 plague, trichinosis, rat-bite fever, dysentery, foot-and-mouth 

 disease, and influenza among horses. Mr Martin Hinton, 

 in a valuable booklet on Rats and Mice as Enemies of 

 Mankind (No. 8, price is.), shows that the account against 

 the Rat and its relatives does not end here, but that the 

 monetary loss caused yearly by their damage of food and 

 property demands a united effort to exterminate the pests. 

 He suggests various measures for the city and for the 

 country, whereby the ravages of Rats may be checked and 

 a welcome reduction made in their overbearing numbers. 



One of the series is an interesting variant from the 

 records of the more familiar types of relationship between 

 animals and man, namely, Dr R. Kirkpatrick's The Biology 

 of Waterworks (price is.). Here the unwelcome visitors 

 introduced to unsuspecting householders by way of water- 

 pipes pass under review ; an account is given of the well- 

 known assemblages of fresh-water plants and animals (and 

 they include eels and sticklebacks) which have been found 

 inhabiting the water-systems of towns in Britain or the 

 Continent, as well as of the part played by lesser organisms 

 in the purifying action of modern sand-filters. 



This "Economic Series" is an admirable expression of 

 an excellent idea. To the naturalist, it affords interesting 

 and dependable summaries of information ; it ought to 

 convince the ignorant and the doubter that the study of 

 natural history is neither a fad nor an interesting (but 



