CATTLE TICK. 



123 



dung-inhabiting or carrion beetles. It is a smoothly polished, 

 round, flattened mite, with short, thick legs, scarcely reaching 

 beyond the body. 



We now come to the Ticks, which comprise the largest mites. 

 The genus Argas closely resembles Ixodes. Gerstaecker states 

 that the Argas Persicus is very annoying to travellers in Persia. 

 The habits of the wood ticks (Ixodes) are well known. Travel- 

 lers in the tropics speak of the intolerable torment occasioned 

 by these pests which, occurring ordinarily on shrubs and trees, 

 attach themselves to all sorts of reptiles, beasts and cattle, and 

 even man himself as he passes by within their reach. Some- 

 times cases fall within the practice of the physician, who is 

 called to remove the tick, which is found sometimes literally 

 buried beneath the skin. Mr. J. Stauffer writes me, that "on 

 June 23d the daughter of Abraham Jackson (colored), playing 

 among the leaves in a wood, near 

 Springville, Lancaster County, 

 Penn., on her return home com- 

 plained of pain in the arm. No 

 attention was paid to it till the 

 next day, when a raised tumor 

 was noticed, a small portion pro- 

 truding through the skin, appar- 

 ently like a splinter of wood. 

 The child was taken to Dr. 

 Morency, who applied the for- 

 ceps, and after considerable pain 

 to the child, and labor to himself, extracted a species of Ixodes, 

 nearly one-quarter of an inch long, and of an oval form and 

 brown mahogany color, with a metallic spot, like silver bronze, 

 centrally on the dorsal region." This tick proved, from Mr. 

 Stauffcr's figures, to be, without doubt, Ixodes unipunctata. It 

 has also been found in Massachusetts by Mr. F. G. Sanborn. 



Another species is the Ixodes bovis (Fig. 147), the common 

 cattle tick of the Western States and Central America. It is 

 very annoying to horned cattle, gorging itself with their blood, 

 but is by no means confined to them alone, as it lives indiffer- 

 ently upon the rattlesnake, the iguana, small mammals and 

 undoubtedly any other animal that brushes by its lurking-place 

 in the forest. It is a reddish, coriaceous, flattened, seed-like 

 creature, with the body oblong oval, and contracted just behind 



147. Cattle Tick. 



