116 



control, stringent quarantine measures should be resorted to 

 before letting foreign poultry into tick-free yards. If an infested 

 chicken -house is of little value it should be burnt. In other cases 

 it is necessary to remove any unnecessary boards, boxes, &c., 

 which may form a hiding* place for ticks, and to spray the house 

 with pure kerosene, crude petroleum (Beaumont oil), creosote, 

 whitewash containing carbolic acid, strong kerosene emulsion, 

 boiling water, or any of the standard tick dips. The application 

 of hot tar is useful to fill up the cracks and seal up the ticks 

 already in them. The chicken tick has been found to be one of 

 the most difficult forms of animal life to destroy, insect powders 

 and fumigation with hydrocyanic acid being entirely inadequate. 

 Dipping' the birds in gasoline destroys every tick attached to 

 them, but this treatment is too harsh to be recommended. A very 

 simple and inexpensive method of protecting fowls is to suspend 

 the roosting perches, which should be absolutely smooth and free 

 from bark, by means of small wires from the ceiling. Wires 

 should also be run from the perches to the side of the building* 

 in order to prevent the framework from touching at any point. 

 Applications of insecticides also destroy the chicken mite 

 (Dermanyssus gallinae, Redi) and the chicken flea (Echidnophaga 

 gallbiacea, Westw.), which are of considerable importance in the 

 U.S.A. The fowl tick can be kept completely out of a poultry 

 farm by scrupulous cleanliness and constant vigilance. In Texas 

 the introduction of tick-proof houses built of corrugated iron has 

 kept the pest out. Wire nests which may be thoroughly cleaned 

 by burning the straw in them and holding the wire part over the 

 blaze, or tick-proof boxes isolated by means of legs set in dishes 

 filled with kerosene are desirable. 



Drake-Brockman (Dr. E. E.). Ticks and Relapsing Fever in 

 Somaliland. — Reports to the Colonial Office, dated 6th April 

 and 16th April 1913. 



Dr. Drake-Brockmann reports the outbreak in Bulbar of an 

 epidemic of relapsing fever, a disease never before recorded from 

 Somaliland. An examination of a large collection of ticks from 

 the infected Midgen and adjacent Dolhabanta haffas failed to 

 reveal Ornithodorns moubata, the tick transmitting relapsing 

 fever in British East Africa. However, a closely allied species, 

 0. savignyi, was found, which probably transmits the disease in 

 Somaliland. As this tick occurs in large numbers in the native 

 huts in Berbera it is likely that the disease will spread to that 

 town. 



