118 



Note on Tick Fever in Cattle. 

 By C. J. Pound, F.R.M.S. 



(^Read June 17t7i, 1898.) 



I have worked out protective inoculation for Tick Fever. Up 

 to the present time some thousands of head of cattle have been 

 inoculated, and the results have proved highly satisfactory, for 

 when such cattle are subjected to gross tick infection, or injected 

 with virulent blood, they remain perfectly immune, while the 

 " controls," or unprotected animals, subjected to the same con- 

 ditions, are readily attacked with severe and acute fever, which 

 often ends fatally. 



So successful have our experiments been that numbers of stock- 

 owners, whose cattle are threatened with an invasion of tick, 

 have lost no time in systematically inoculating the whole of theu' 

 herds. 



I have been kept busy inoculating a number of valuable stud 

 bulls and heifers from Victoria and New South Wales, which are 

 to be sent to North Queensland, where the ticks are very bad. 

 By the same mail I am sending you some bottles containing 

 several species of ticks (preserved in 3 % formalin), with notes 

 on the locality, and the animals, native or otherwise, I have 

 found them on. You will notice that in some species I have only 

 sent females, as the males I have never seen, nor has any one I 

 have met, such as observant bushmen, who are constantly meeting 

 with ticks. 



I may tell you that every species of tick (other than the 

 genuine Cattle Tick, the cause of "Tick Fever " or " Red-water " 

 in cattle) is known to bushmen, squatters, etc., as the *' Scrub 

 Tick." Our museums throughout the Colonies cannot give any 

 reliable information respecting ticks, nor have they even a 

 representative collection of the known species which are commonly 

 met with, consequently there is a vast unexplored field of research 

 in this direction. 



