408 A YEAR IN BRAZIL. 



is general ; it seems to be in the air ; every blade of grass has its 

 colony ; clusters of hundreds adhere to the twigs ; myriads are 

 found in the bush clumps. Lean and flat when growing on the 

 leaves, the tick catches man or beast brushing by, fattens rapidly, 

 and, at the end of a week's good living, drops off plena cruoris" 

 Chernoviz states that "Carrapatos lay an enormous -number of 

 eggs, not on the bodies of the animals where they have lived, 

 but on the ground. The young which emerge from them climb 

 up the plants, holding on to the leaves, and wait until some 

 animal passes." Mr. Bates mentions * that it occupied him a full 

 hour daily to pick them off after his diurnal ramble, and continues, 

 " When they mount to the summits of slender blades of grass, or 

 the tips of leaves, they hold on by their fore legs only, the other 

 three pairs being stretched out so as to fasten on any animal 

 which comes in their way." " Horses and cattle f suffer greatly 

 from the Ixodes, and even die from exhaustion." I have frequently 

 seen, under the manes of horses who have been out some days at 

 grass, a mass of some dozen or twenty huge ticks, each the size 

 of a broad bean. " The traveller soon wears a belt of bites like 

 the ' shingles ' of Lancashire. The tick attacks the most incon- 

 venient places, and the venomous irritating wound will bring on 

 a ricinian fever, like the pulicious fever of Russia. . . . The 

 excitement of day-travelling makes the nuisance comparatively 

 light ; but when lying down to sleep, the sufferer is persecuted by 

 the creeping and crawling of the small villain, and the heat of the 

 bed adds much to his tribulation." All this is, alas ! too true. 

 " The favourite habitat is the capoeira, or second growth " (after 

 the virgin forest has been cut down), " where the cattle graze. The 

 low shrubs . . . are also good breeding-grounds. Annual prairie 

 fires destroy millions, but the capoes, or bouquets de bois, act as 

 preserves, and the branches are incrusted with them." I found 

 that they are almost exclusively confined to localities where 

 domestic animals graze. In one pasture there were such countless 

 myriads that my men termed it the Fazenda^dos Carrapatos. 



One comfort, at least, of the rainy season is that the tropical 

 deluges wash them off the shrubs, so that from October to April 



* Vol. i. p. 291. 



t "Highlands of Brazil," vol. i. p. 159. 



