LIFE-HISTORY OF TICKS. 147 
When the duration of the pupal condition has ended, and the time 
come for change to the male and female states, they again fall to the 
ground, and again transfer themselves to the skin of such suitable 
hosts as may pass their lurking-places, ‘‘to be nourished on the small 
quantity of pus produced at that point in the skin where their barbed 
rostrum is implanted, as happens with certain nymphe and also 
males,* or to feed upon blood only, as occurs with the fecundated 
females.”” When satiated and swollen up—partly with blood, partly 
with eggs forming within—the female Tick falls to the ground, and 
under some protection lays ‘‘an immense number of eggs agglomerated 
in a mass, with which she remains for some time in contact, and 
subsequently the (now empty and shrivelled) female dies. The eggs 
produce the little six-legged Ticks in from fifteen to twenty days. + 
The feet are furnished with two claws (see figure, p. 146); and the 
feeding apparatus consists in what may be generally described as a 
rostrum, or dart, furnished on the lower side with teeth set backwards 
(see also p. 151 for further details). Consequently, when this is firmly 
driven into the skin, all attempts to pull the Tick off usually fail in 
doing anything beyond tearing away its body and leaving the proboscis 
behind, or tearing away a portion of the skin; but at its own pleasure 
it can withdraw the feeding apparatus. 
Ticks are to be found on many kinds of animals, from man down 
to snakes and tortoises; in the course of last year an unusually large 
Tick was forwarded to me from a field near Luton, which I was 
entirely unable to connect with any reason for it being there until, on 
investigation, it appeared that one or more tortoises had been turned 
out on the grass. The quadrupeds infested may be dogs, deer, camels, 
cattle, horses, mules, and sheep, amongst domesticated animals; but 
though some kinds—as, for instance, the Ixodes ricinus (the so-called 
Dog Tick)—have popular names bestowed as connecting them with 
special animals, yet one kind may be found on so many animals that 
this is no great guide in identification, and likewise colour and form 
may vary in many kinds with sex, age, and condition. 
In regard to the so-called ‘‘ Dog Tick,” the J. ricinus, also to be 
found, sometimes in great numbers, on deer, I give the following note 
of measurement, showing differences of size and colouring under 
* According to some writers, there is still an uncertainty as to the nature of 
the food of the male Tick. 
+ For excellent history of Ticks (Ixodide), with practical considerations thereon, 
see ‘Parasites and Parasitic Diseases of Domesticated Animals,’ translated by Dr. 
Geo. Fleming from the original German work by Prof. L. G. Neumann, pp. 95-105. 
As, although the general points of the history of the infestation are fairly well 
known, I am not aware of the details being so clearly and usefully entered on else: 
where as in the above work, I have availed myself of it for the above short abstraet, 
with thankful acknowledgment.—E. A. O, 
