24 GiiriUh and Sweet. : 



it seems almost L-ertain that had the buffalo imported at the early dates 

 given above been the (iri<j;inal and natural hosts, their descendants 

 would be at least as badly affected as the cattle, if not more aflected. 

 Were these " worm nodules " at all prevalent in butlalocs, it is certain 

 their presence would be known to some of the l;utt'alo hunters, who 

 invariably remove the ))riskets alonii^ with other parts of the flesh for 

 food. During the j)ast 30 years 1U0,UU0 buft'alo hides have been 

 exported from Dar"\vin, so that it is unreasonable to suppose that the 

 parasitic nodules would have been entirely overlooked in all these 

 animals. Certainly the Indian Ghi buft'alo, iuiiported about 1886 by the 

 South Australian Government to Port Darwin itself, cannot be respon- 

 sible for the original introduction of this parasite to Australia, for 

 even were these nodules known in them, such nodules had been dis- 

 covered in Australian cattle long before this. Further enquiries, how- 

 ever, elicited the fact that cattle have been imported from a different 

 source altogether. Captain Everard Home, writing from H.M.S. 

 " North Star," 19th April, 1843, reported to the British Government 

 in a despatch on tlie Port Essington Settlement, among other things, 

 that there were at that date " 1 English cow and a bull, and 2 Indian 

 heifers and 2 cows, . . . besides 6 working oxen and 30 buffaloes." 

 Further, numbers of careful observers among those who hunt buffalo 

 on the Coburg Peninsula are positive that the descendants of these 

 Indian cattle are still there, though, unlike the buffalo, they have not 

 spread across the swampy plains down to the cattle station country. 

 But it seems at least highly probable that they were responsible for the 

 introduction of Onchocerca, not only from a comparison of the date of 

 their entry, and that of the discovery of the nodides in Australian 

 cattle, and the wide distribution of the parasite, but also in the light 

 of a well-considered statement by Mr. S. L. Symonds, Government 

 Veterinarian of the Federated Malay States, that the only animal in 

 which he has ever found the Oncliorerca nodules in those States was 

 an old Indian bullock, the native animals and the buffalo Ijeing free. 



It must be realised, .however, that, if the intermediate host of 

 Onr/iocerca fjlbauiii be a tick, as some have suggested, or a louse, as we 

 ourselves suggested, and considered very proba])le from general evi- 

 dence in our previous paper, since these ecto-parasites can only be 

 conveyed any dist.mce by means of their hosts, the ancestors of the 

 Indian cattle now on the Cuburg 1\ ninsula imild not be incriminated, 

 for, as already stated, these cattle have never become mixed with the 

 station herds. Assuming, however, some Vjlood-sucking insect such as 

 a biting lly to be the intermediary host, then the |)0ssibilitics of trans- 

 ference over considerable distances must be admitted. A thorough 

 investigation of the descendants of the Indian and British cattle now 

 on Coburg Peninsula, will therefore [)rovc extremely interesting, and 



