151 



Weiss (A.). Sur un Nouveau Pulicide, Ceratophi/llus haesidatoris 



desideratus (^, nouvelle Sous-esp6ce. — Arch. Inst. Pasteur, Tunis, 



xi, no. 1, June 1919, pp. 24-27, 2 figs. 



Among material collected in southern Tunisia in April 1914 is a 



new flea, described under the above name, having all the appearance 



of a hybrid between C. maurus, Roths., with some allied species such as 



C. barbarus. Roths. C. maurus has been taken in spring in the 



department of Algiers on Jacuhis orientalis and also in the Algerian 



mountain chain in the department of Constantine on Meriones shawi. 



This Tunisian form was taken in the extreme south of Tunisia on 



Psamomys algirus and Mus alexandrinus. The male only is described, 



the female being unknown. 



RoDHAiN (J.). Remarques au Sujet de la Biologie de VOrnithodorus 

 moubata. — C.R. Soc. Biol, Paris, Ixxxii, no. 23, 19th July 1919, 

 pp. 934-940. 



As man is the preferred host of Ornithodorus moubata, this tick is 

 normally found only in places frequented by human beings. It feeds 

 slowly and prefers to do so by dusk or at night and is therefore found 

 chiefly in places where human beings go to rest or sleep, particularly 

 the interior of dwelling-houses. It avoids damp, and after feeding, 

 chooses a dry hiding-place in some crack in the wall, or, if the huts are 

 of thatch, hides in the straw of the walls or roof until night, when it 

 drops upon the bed of the inhabitant. 



Various observations of previous years have shown that the para- 

 sitism of 0. moubata is not always as exclusive to man as was at first 

 thought. The tick has been discovered in the burrow of a warthog 

 in Rhodesia [see this Review, Ser. B, iv, p. 44], on domestic pigs [loc. 

 cit., V, p. 35], and the biological significance of this aberrant parasitism 

 has been discussed [loc. cit., v, p. 36]. 



The author records two further instances that have come to his 

 notice. During mihtary operations in 1916 in Urundi, ex-German 

 East Africa, many spirillary infections were reported among the 

 troops temporarily encamped at Usumbura. A few of the soldiers 

 infected had lodged in houses infested with 0. moubata, but the 

 majority were in tents situated in avenues of old mango- trees. Ticks 

 were searched for in one of these avenues, where old huts that had 

 swarmed with 0. moubata had been a few years previously, and even in 

 the soil about the sites of the old houses, but without success. Finally 

 however, ticks were found under pieces of dried bark on the trunk of 

 an old mango-tree, about four inches above the roots, where they had 

 probably taken refuge after the destruction of the houses, awaiting 

 a suitable host. These conditions of life resemble those of 0. savignyi, 

 which, in British SomaHland, lives in the dust around wells and pools, 

 pending the arrival of a suitable host and attacking indiscriminately 

 men, camels, or any domestic cattle [see this Review, Ser. B, iii, p. 229], 



While examining examples of 0. moubata at Ujiji in 1918, for the 

 existence of spirochaetss, the author was surprised to find some of 

 the ticks engorged mth the blood of birds. Upon investigation it 

 was discovered that these individuals had been taken from a tem- 

 porarily unoccupied room in a native house, where two hens had been 

 coming regularly at night to sleep under a disused bed, and the hungry 

 ticks had without doubt fed upon them. 



