Annals of the Transvaal Museum. 
140 
Hosts . — Same as liebraeum. 
Habitat . — Same as liebraeum. 
A careful study of my specimens of tliese two forms shows that they, 
are very difficult to distinguish one from the other, and that there are 
many intermediate forms which might be included under either form. 1 
find that in specimens of males which are plainly eburneum the transverse 
line connecting the two anterior longitudinal hands running along the 
cervical grooves is more often not present than present ; also the posterior 
median dark line does not always run completely into the transverse median 
arched band. The differences between the type and the variety seems to 
be mainly one of intensity of colouration. In the females 1 also find the- 
variations slight, although they are more easily distinguished than the 
males. I find that in the type occasionally the posterior median light 
coloured area may be extended anteriorly by two light coloured lines, which 
may be even confluent as in eburneum , but these areas are always of a dark 
bronzy colour in the type instead of a reddish grey as in the variety. The 
eyes of liebraeum seem to be usually of a darker colour than those of 
eburneum, but liebraeum never has the light coloured anterior margin to the 
shield which is present in eburneum, nor is the body of partly engorged 
females ever of the light colour which seems characteristic of eburneum ■ 
females when in preservative fluid. 
AMBLYOMMA VABIEGATUM. (FA ERIC I US.) 
The Variegated Tick. 
Acarus variegatus, Fabricius (1794). 
Ixodes elegans, Guerin-Meneville (1829-1843). 
Amblyomma venustum, Koch (1844, 1847). 
Amblyomma variegatum (Fabricius) (Neumann, 1896.) 
Plate XII, figures h, l ; Plate XIII, figures a, b. 
Male. — Body oval, wider behind, 5 mm. long (rostrum not included) by 
3.5 to 4 mm. wide. Dorsal shield convex, covering all the upper surface, 
deep reddish brown, with copper-red spots, bordered with metallic green ; 
cervical grooves short and deep ; marginal grooves narrow, commencing a 
little behind the eyes, contouring the posterior margin, from which it is 
further distant than from the lateral edges, forms the anterior borders of 
the festoons ; behind the cervical emargination, a copper-red spot, 
equal to about a third of the width, wider behind, where it 
is bordered by a curved, brown band ; on each side of this spot is another,, 
irregular longitudinal, concave inward, approaching the eye, on the 
corresponding side, with its anterior extremity, sometimes united to the 
median spot by a part of its inner margin, and continuing behind by a wide 
median spot which occupies' almost all the width, and is separated from 
the marginal groove by a brown line, this latter is prolonged on the median 
line in a very narrow line, and may have another triangular prolongation in 
front opposite the penultimate festoon ; festoons elongate, reddish brown, 
bordered with yellowish white the same as all the contour of the body ; 
punctuations scattered, ordinarily not very deep, unequal ; eyes hemi- 
spherical, shining, anterior, brownish or yellowish, in orbits. Ventral 
