43 
as is characteristic of the Ixodide, covers the entire dorsum, while 
that of the female is restricted to a small area above the rostrum. 
The adult bont tick is seldom found on bushes or grass, and it appears 
that it seeks a host solely from the ground. The male takes up a 
position independent of the female, and after several days, generally 
four or five, he makes known by straightening his body and waving 
his legs when one of the opposite sex approaches him that he is 
prepared for a mate. The female, without having previously fed, 
searches about until an eligible male is found, and on finding one 
embraces him and installs herself on the skin with her ventrum 
opposed to his. When an unpaired eligible male is wanting the female 
may attach herself by a mated couple, but she rarely settles down dis- 
tant from one of the other sex, and her evident object in settling by a 
couple is to secure the male after the other female leaves. In about 
eight days from affixing herself to a host, or longer if a mate is not at 
once secured, the female becomes fully distended with blood and drops. 
The male becomes somewhat thicker in body but no longer or wider, 
and appears to subsist not on blood but on products of suppuration in 
the wound he makes. He may remain for many months in the one 
position and mate successively with a number of females. One speci- 
men under observation has been attached over seven months. The two 
sexes are produced in approximately even numbers, but the males 
appear to predominate, owing to their longer attachment. 
How copulation is effected has not been determined with certainty. 
It is conjectured that the female protrudes an organ by invagination, 
which is brought into intimate contact with the sexual orifice of the 
male. Mr. Claude Fuller, the Natal entomologist, called my attention 
to the probability of this unique means for intercourse with respect to 
another Ioxdid, and since I have repeatedly witnessed the quick retrac- 
tion of a protruded organ by the female of the bont and several other 
Ixodidee when separating couples. The invagination may be similar 
to that which occurs in the process of oviposition. The male orifice 
in the bont and some other species is beneath a rounded, lid-like shield 
which opens forward, and when males have been suddenly parted from 
their mates this shield has ofttimes been observed to be raised. 
Females do not appear able to complete their engorgement until they 
have mated. 
The bont tick infests cattle, horses, sheep, goats, and ostriches, and 
probably various other animals, as on the evidence of farmers it is not 
infrequent on old or weakened buffaloes and other kinds of horned 
game. It attaches itself to man occasionally, and now and again is 
found on the barnyard fowl. Curiously, mules seem to become less 
infested than horses. That it may mature and reproduce when reared 
on horses, cattle, and goats has been established, and that it may fully 
engorge itself, both as a larva and nymph, on ostriches and afterwards 
