151 



cleared away. A soft tick is killed in a half a minute if touched with 

 a small drop of turpentine, and if the skin be rubbed with turpentine 

 the ticks will rarely bite ; when conveying patients from one locality 

 to another, this treatment is recommended to prevent spread of 

 the disease. Infested spots are best dealt with by lighting a circle of 

 fire round the outer edge, and so feeding the fire from the inside that 

 the whole area is burned over ; this is specially applicable to the 

 neighbourhood of wells. Soaking the soil with corrosive sublimate 

 (1 : 1,000) is of no avail, and experiments show that the ticks will 

 stand even prolonged immersion in sand thoroughly wetted with the 

 solution without suffering the least harm. In the discussion which 

 followed. Dr. Baker said that four companies of the King's African 

 Rifles went from Uganda to Somaliland in 1910, and possibly took 

 spirochaetes with them. Dr. Low said that 0. moubata, in Uganda, 

 lives in cracks in the floor and walls of houses and huts, and 

 never in great numbers on the sandy soil of camping grounds ; it 

 resembles a bug in its habits, biting at night and retiring by day ; 

 the bites are painful, and there is often considerable inflammation. 

 Dr. Sandwith remarked that in dealing with plague in Egypt, gallons 

 of corrosive sublimate were used against fleas without the slightest 

 effect. The author stated that missionaries are constantly attacked 

 by tick fever, as the rest houses kept for Europeans are inhabited by 

 natives in their absence and become badly infested. Dr. Baker said 

 that his practice, when in charge of troops or police, was to have all 

 the native shelters burned on breaking camp ; labour camps at stations 

 require the same treatment, and if the money be available, it would 

 be better to have permanent buildings for labourers. 



The " mosquero " or spiders' nest used in Mexico as a fly-trap. — Bull. 

 Soc. Nat, AcclimaL, Paris, Ixii, no. 6, June 1915, pp. 170-171. 



According to M. Diguet, it has been hitherto impossible to preserve 

 in Europe the spiders' nest known in Mexico as " mosquero "and used 

 there as a fly-trap. In Mexico, the three necessary conditions are 

 shade, a high degree of humidity and a hving tree. The first two are 

 obtainable by hanging a nest, or a portion of one (a nest may amount 

 to 40 cubic feet in bulk), in a room where water is evaporated. The 

 spider itself only measures about ^V inch and has a larger spider as 

 a commensal. Very often other insects are fomid in the nest, especially 

 some small Coleoptera, which doubtless keep the nest in a clean state 

 by eating the bodies of the flies from which the small spiders have 

 sucked the juices. The structure of the nest resembles that of a 

 sponge. 



SouLiMA (A.) & Ebert (B.). Nouveauxrem§des contre les Ectoparasites. 

 [New remedies against ectoparasites.]— C. R. Soc, Biol, Paris, 

 kxviii, no. 14, 25th June 1915, p. 340. 



After examining a large number of known remedies, which were all 

 re-prepared and tested, the following are considered to be the most 

 efficient and the best adapted to the circumstances of armies in the 

 field :— (a) 35 per cent, cresol and 65 per cent, naphtha soap ; (6), 

 35 per cent, xylol and 65 per cent, naphtha soap ; (c) 5 per cent. 



