54 Genus Ornithodoros 



the map will show that ticks are found particularly along much travelled 

 roads. Although plentiful in many Arabised villages along the Congo 

 between Kasongo and Ponthierville, they are quite unknown in native 

 villages an hours' walk inland." 



One of us has received specimens collected at Dowa, Lilongwe, and 

 at Blantyre, British Central Africa ; at Tete, Portuguese East Africa, 

 and in the District of Benguella, Angola. These, and other specimens 

 of uncertain origin, have reached us through the courtesy of Messrs 

 Daniels, Leishman, Newstead and Wellman. 



Habitat : Livingstone (1857, p. 628) noted their presence in native 

 huts at Ambaca, at Tete and " wherever the Arabs go." 



Karsch (1878, p. 311) writing of Mombassa, states that " papazS" are 

 found especially in the "Fort" and the huts of the Wanika and 

 Wataita. 



Christy (1903, p. 187) states that the "bibo" is most easily collected 

 in Uganda by " searching the dust and straw on the floors of the huts 

 erected for the caravan porters, or the houses of the natives, though in 

 the latter it is not so easily found when the floors are kept clean. Near 

 Kampala the natives collected them around the bases of the vertical 

 supporters of the roof." He further states that they are " frequently 

 carried long distances in mats or bedding, or in porters' loads which 

 have been piled for safety in the rest-huts at night." Some specimens 

 he collected in Toro had been carried in bags of salt from Kative at the 

 north end of Lake Albert Edward. 



Dutton and Todd (1905 b) suggest that "Perhaps one of the reasons 

 for which ticks are more often found in Arab than in native houses is 

 that the Arabs make better, drier buildings, and live in permanent 

 villages. Native huts are temporary affairs and a slight cause, one or 

 two cases of sickness, is often enough to make a community leave their 

 houses and build a village elsewhere." Along the Congo the rest houses 

 for native travellers were always the most infested. "In infested houses 

 the ticks are found in the dust and cracks of mud-floors, particularly in 

 dry places near the hearth, in bed-platforms, or immediately inside the 

 door-sill, just where the natives are accustomed to sit down. They hide 

 themselves in the cracks and crevices of mud or grass walls, and even in 

 the thatched roofs." 



Specimens sent to us by Dr Wellman were collected in cracks in 

 the floor in native kraals, District of Benguella, West Africa. Wellman 

 states he has found "as many as 100 in one hour in an old native 

 hut." 



