48 



forty which hatched in a cardboard box molted therein to an eight- 

 legged form without having partaken of food. The other stages, to 

 draw conclusions from observations on captured specimens afterwards 

 fed on a fowl or goat, attach themselves by night or day to the host 

 and gorge themselves to repletion in from one-half hour to two hours. 

 They then crawl away and hide. The females alternate egg laying 

 with feasting. The tampan is widely distributed in South Africa, and 

 in some sections is a sore trial to travelers. 



THE FOWL TICK. 



The fowl tick of South Africa has been identified by Professor 

 Neumann as the historic Argos per.ncvs. It is a flattened, ovate crea- 

 ture, with a peculiarh" stippled dorsal surface. It measures about 

 two-fifths of an inch when full grown. Poultry, geese, and ducks are 

 commonly afiiicted with it, and death from loss of blood sometimes 

 follows severe attacks, particularly in the case of young birds. Man 

 is sometimes attacked. 



This tick molts its skin three times before becoming adult. The 

 eggs are laid loosely in crevices. The hexapod larva crawls to a host, 

 afiixes itself, and remains attached nearly a week. The body mean- 

 while distends with blood, and, toward the last, undergoes a change of 

 form which gives it the general appearance of the later stages. When 

 fully engorged, the larva crawls off and secretes itself in some crevice 

 or under the bark of a tree preparatory to molting. In its later stages 

 the tick normally visits its host in darkness, remains but an hour or 

 two, and during this short time distends its bod}- fully. One visit 

 only intervenes with a molting. The adult male enlarges but little. 

 The adult female increases all its dimensions with its first feast after 

 the final molt, and later appears to simply fill itself out to the size 

 then attained. It alternates feeding with egg laying. A score or 

 more of specimens under observation and fed on a caged fowl ha\'e 

 thus alternated feasting with oviposition four times. Intercourse 

 between the sexes has only thrice been observed. In all three cases 

 the male had his rostrum inserted into the female. Large numbers of 

 both sexes have been fed and kept boxed in company, and as only the 

 three pairs have been seen together, some observations of importance 

 probably remain to be made. Less than three weeks need intervene 

 between the feastings of the nymphic stages and a month those of the 

 adults. 



The vitality of the fowl tick is remarkabl(\ It resists insecticides, 

 even hydrocyanic-acid gas, far more than the bedbug or other prover- 

 bially hard-to-kill pests. The larvjE may be soon starved to death, but 

 the later stages live on through months of fasting and succumb only 

 when shriveled to a dry shell. Several have remained alive over a- 

 3^ear in cardboard boxes on my office desk. 



