428 



BUEEAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 



same specimens were examined by Ashmead, Schwarz, and Coquillette, 

 who concurred in this view. This opinion was referred to by our 

 Australian colleagues in one of their publications (Hunt and Collins, 

 1896, pp. 31, 32). Neumann, who examined the same specimens upon 

 which we had based our view, looked upon the Australian form as 

 identical with the North American. Fuller (1899, pp. 389-391), how- 

 ever, restudied the question and recognized the North American, the 

 Australian, and the South African forms as three distinct species. 

 The following extracts from his paper bear upon the question involved: 



Together with this I am sending you some notes on the various cattle ticks, from 

 which you will see that I have found the North American, the Australian, and that 

 from Cape Colony distinct from one another. The Queensland form appears to be a 

 new species, for which I have proposed the name australis; it is curious that it is 

 the same as the one Mr. Pound sent me as coming from South America. 



These notes I have written in a form suitable for reproduction in your Agricultural 



Fig. 154. — Diagrams of posterior margin of males: a, Boophilus annulatus; b, Rhipicepkalan caudatus; 

 c, B. australis; d, B. decolomtus. a and b from Neumann. After Fuller, 1899, p. 392. 



Journal, in the pages of which I should like to see them reproduced. Drawings 

 suitable for making zinc blocks from are also sent, which, if added as illustrations, 

 will render the notes much more valuable. 



As early as 1893 the Queensland cattle tick was identified as Ixodes bovis Riley, by 

 the late A. S. Olliff , and was until recently regarded as specifically identical with that 

 species by many later students. I believe that the first doubt as to the correctness of 

 this assumption was thrown out by Dr. D. E. Salmon, Chief of the U. S. A. Bureau 

 of Animal Industry, in a letter to Mr. P. R. Gordon, chief inspector of stock 

 (Queensland). In this communication (dated 9th December, 1897) Dr. Salmon says: 

 ' You will possibly recall that we considered the Australian form distinct from our 

 American form. Professor Neumann — who had for his monograph a very large 

 'number of specimens, including our entire collection, and has studied the Austra- 

 lian ticks which Dr. Hunt gave us some time ago — does not, however, agree with us 

 on this point, but considers that they are identical." 



As it has since become important to settle the identity of the supposed red water 

 tick in Cape Colony, also said to be /. bovis, I have made a careful study of all three 

 forms, and have come to the conclusion that they are three distinct speciesc 



