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JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 



'Vol. 5 



burning then came to be adopted against the ticks themselves. Burn- 

 ing off the grass, when the larvse ticks are sitting on it waiting for a 

 host animal, will greatly reduce the number of ticks, but of course 

 fails to destroy the ticks or tick eggs which are in a protected position. 

 Starvation of Ticks. The starvation method of eradicating ticks 

 — which has been so successful in the Southern United States, against 

 B. annulatus has been tried in South Africa, but has not been so 

 effective. If B. decoloratus was the only tick which was to be starved 

 out, the method would prove successful in this country, providing all 

 the host animals were kept off the land for a period of nine to ten 

 months. The animals would. all be moved into plot B and at the 



Fig. 6. Plan showing divi.sion of land for the starvation of ticks. 



end of nine or ten months moved to plot C for a period of about 

 five or six weeks, during which time all the ticks would have dropped 

 from the animal, but they would not have time to lay their eggs, and 

 the larvse of-«ilie next generation to attach themselves to the animals. 

 The stock could then be turned into A which would be tick-free, while 

 B and C could be closed to cattle for ten months. 



Generallj" the question is not the eradication of the blue tick, but 

 also the eradication of the brown and red ticks, Rhipicephalus sps. 

 and the Bont tick A. hebrceum. In theory even these could be 

 destroyed by placing all the animals in B and keeping them there 

 for a period of fifteeen months. They could then be transferred to 

 C where they could be kept for about six weeks and the blue tick 



