30 GUAM AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 



the island is rough and uneven. The hills are but poorly covered 

 A\ ith grass, while the lower ground is usually densely wooded. The 

 villages and most of the ranches are located close to the seashore, 

 leaving a great portion of the interior of the island in its wild, 

 natural state. Comparative!}' few fenced pastures are to be found 

 in Guam. Practicall}' all the cattle that are not running in more or 

 less of a Avild state in the interior of the island are used as cart ani- 

 mals, traveling from village to village and from ranch to ranch. The 

 constant use of cattle for carting would make it exceedingly difficult 

 to maintain and enforce a quarantine. If the eradication of the ticks 

 were attempted, not only the cattle would have to be taken into 

 account, but the horses, carabao, goats, and deer as well. 



The station in the past has practiced hand picking, together with 

 the oil and kerosene treatment, which is unsatisfactory in several 

 essentials. Because of ticky animals on and around the station 

 grounds the animals being freed of ticks frequentl}^ become rein- 

 fested. A thorough application of oil creates a rise in temperature 

 and alwavs seriously affects the general condition, while the hand 

 application of oil is seldom so thorough as to rid the animal of all 

 ticks. The station is planning during the coming year the use of an 

 arsenical dip in the eradication of ticks by treating the stock at regu- 

 lar intervals. 



The method employed by the natives in freeing the cattle of ticks 

 is b}' standing the infested animal in the sea for an hour or more 

 and thoroughly saturating the body with salt water by means of a 

 coconut husk. The skin of the animal is then scraped with a machete 

 to remove the ticks, after which the juice of some two or three dozen 

 lemons is rubbed well into the skin. This treatment, if repeated two 

 or three times at 6 to 8 day intervals, proves fairl}' effective. 



LivEK FLUKES (Fasciola hepatica). 



The disease commonly known as liver rot has been found affect- 

 ing cattle, hogs, and goats in Guam. A post-mortem examination 

 of 32 beef carcasses at the city market in Agana showed 26 livers 

 infested with flukes, 4 livers bearing evidences of former fluke in- 

 festation, and 2 normal livers; and of 14 hog carcasses examined, 9 

 livers were infested with flukes, 2 showed the effects of flukes, and 3 

 were normal. 



The fluke is a small leaflike parasite with thin edges, dark brown 

 or chocolate in color, about 1 inch in length and three-fourths inch 

 in width. The parasites will exhibit contractile movements only for 

 a short time after being removed from the liver: they are her- 

 maphroditic in nature, each animal being capable of producing from 

 3,000 to 4,000 eggs. The eggs, passing from the intestines of the 



