i2 4 THOMPSON YATES AND JOHNS TON LABORATORIES REPORT 
The rivers are the present highways. Old and present caravan routes 
used by Europeans, along which ticks are known to occur, are indicated by 
dotted lines. A glance at the map shows that ticks are found, particularly, 
along much travelled roads. How easily they may be carried in even a 
European's luggage is well shown by our experience on leaving Nyangwe, 
where we were well lodged irj well-built houses. Although the ticks* are 
plentiful in many of the Arabised villages along the Congo between Kasongo 
and Ponthierville, they are quite unknown m the native villages an hour's 
walk inland. The rest-houses for native travellers are always the most 
infested. At Kumba, Lokandu, and Ukungwa, the points furthest down the 
river at which we caught ticks, the rest-houses alone seemed to be infested. 
At Kumba the native paddlers of the town said they did not recognise, and 
seemed to nave no fear of, the tick. Dr. Christy, in Uganda (11) and the 
Rev. W. Holman Bentley in the Lower Congo have also found that rest-houses 
are particularly liable to be infested. 
Mr. Bentley believes that human ticks were a chief cause of the great 
mortality which existed among the Lower Congo porters in the old days 
when the whole commerce of the Free State was carried over the caravan 
route between Matadi and Leopoldville. 
Names given to the ticks in various localities are as follow: — In the 
neighbourhood of Leopoldville Bifundikala, and, by the Bateke, Bimpusi. 
It exists along the Kwango river, at least between Popokabaka and Francis 
Joseph Tails, among the Basumbo and Bayaka people. At Popokabaka it is 
called Moityata. The common name throughout the eastern part of the State 
is Kimputu. Very occasionally an educated man uses the Suaheh word 
Papasi. 
In infected houses the ticks are found in the dust and cracks of mud- 
floors, particularly in dry places near the hearth, in bed-platforms, or imme- 
diately inside the door-sill, just where the natives are accustomed to sit 
down. They may hide themselves in the cracks and crevices of mud or 
grass walls, and even in the thatched roofs. 
When ticks are disturbed they often curl up their legs as if dead. So 
lifeless do they seem that one might easily be deceived, especially since they 
sometimes remain motionless for hours. 
Ticks can crawl rather quickly. In sana the body of a large one leaves 
a smooth, central furrow, with the sharp, crab-like tracks of the claws on 
either side, ihey seem to be largely nocturnal in their habits, and certainly 
do not feed quickly enough to get much blood from any but a sleeping person. 
A big female may remain, firmly fixed, feeding on a monkey for two or three 
hours before it finally drops off, as large as a cherry, distended and bloated 
with blood. Others may fall off and attempt to crawl away after half an 
hour's feeding. In feeding (PI. 3, fig. 2), the tick first firmly fixes the forelegs, 
and then, depressing the capitulum, buries its mouth-parts in the host. The 
bite of even a small tick is painful. In monkeys, immediately after feeding, a 
small crust of sero-sanguinolent fluid forms at the site of the bite. 
Surrounding it is a roseola about two millimetres in width. Two hours later 
the central clot is surrounded by two concentric zones, each two millimetres 
in width ; the first colourless, the second ecchymotic. Six hours later the 
