[61] 



Report of the State Entomologist. 



157 



Description. 

 The mature insect is described as follows by Dr. Packard, in the 

 "Annual Report of the Peabody Academy of Science," April, 1869, 

 p. 68, and in the Sixth Annual Report of the United States Geological 

 Survey of the Territories, for the year 1872 (Hayden), 1873, p. 740: 



A reddish, coriaceous, flattened species, with the body oblong-oval, 

 contracted just behind the middle; head short and broad, not spined 

 behind, with two deep round pits; palpi and beak together, unusually 

 short; pal^ji long and slender; labium short and broad, densely spined 

 beneath; above, the mandibles are smooth, with terminal hooks; 

 thoracic shield distinct, one-third longer than wide, smooth and 

 polished, convex, with the lyrate mesial convexity very distinct. 

 The whole body is sparsely covered with minute hairs. Legs long 

 and slender, pale testacf ous red; cox;c not spined. Length of body, 

 0.15 of an inch; width, 0.09 of an inch. 



Habits. 

 By the aid of the teeth and hooks, with which the mouth 

 parts of the tick are furnished (see accompanying figure), it 

 penetrates the skin of the animals which it 

 attacks, and burying its head and anterior por- 

 tion of its body in the opening made, it gorges 

 itself upon the blood. They have been known 

 to occur in such numbers upon cattle as almost 

 to cover them, being so closely crowded together 

 in jiortions of their body " that a knife-blade 

 could scarcely be thrust between them." It is 

 easy to conceive that in such cases death would 

 naturall^^ ensue from the attendant loss of blood, 

 the resulting inflammation and, as it is thought, Fiu. 25. — Mouth- 



the poison thrown into the wound. It is not '"^''*'^ ^\}^V^^,^ 

 '- BO\as. (After Pack- 



confined to cattle, but has been found on other ard.) 

 mammals, as the porcupine and hare, and on some reptiles. 



In an instance recorded by Murray, it was taken from the neck of a 

 miner in Utah, a portion of whose skin was left adhering to the 

 rostrum, as may be seen in the specimen preserved in the British 

 Museum. 



Dr. Hagen has published in Entomologica Americana for November, 

 1887 (iii, p. 124), an interesting account of Ixodes bovis having been 

 removed alive, by John Orne Green, M. D., of the Harvard Medical 

 School, from the ear of a man, where its presence had been indicated 

 by itching and obstruction of the passage, dating back to a residence 

 on a cattle ranch in Arizona, four months previous. 



