Ticks and Redwater. 
71 
in tepid water with soft soap and dried. Dressings should 
be thoroughly applied. Sulphur, tar, creosote, paraffin, are all 
effectual. Mercurial ointment is sometimes used for dressing 
limited areas, but there is always a certain amount of danger 
connected with this preparation. The application should be 
made two or three times, with intervals of about a week, and 
then may or may not be washed off. In providing for any 
parasites which may have left the affected animal, anything 
with which these have been in contact should be disinfected 
after each dressing of the animal with a solution of blue vitriol 
or carbolic acid, and all contaminated litter burnt. 
Ticks . 1 — These parasites are of the same Order as those 
causing mange. The family name is Ixodidse. They are 
widely distributed over the world and attack animals of many 
varieties. Mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, all harbour 
them, and may transport them long distances. 
Until within recent years, ticks have been popularly 
regarded, in Great Britain more particularly, as parasites of 
the sheep, but we know them to be common on sheep, cattle, 
and dogs in some parts of the country. They are temporary 
parasites living apart from their proper ultimate host for 
considerable portions of their existence. Ticks are of com- 
paratively large size, all being visible to the naked eye, the 
six-legged larva being about one-sixteenth of an inch long, 
while the mature female, distended with eggs and with blood 
sucked from the host, may be three-eighths of an inch long, 
and a quarter of an inch broad, or the size of a small horse 
bean, to which it bears some slight resemblance. The male 
also becomes distended after a meal of blood, though not to the 
extent of the female. The female, when fully distended with 
eggs, drops off on to the ground and undergrowth, where she 
discharges her very numerous eggs, shrivels up, and dies. In 
about fifteen days, six-legged larvae are hatched from the eggs, 
and may live for months, attached to dry grass, &c. As many 
as 2,000 larvae have been counted on a single blade of grass. 
After further development into nymphae and mature ticks, 
they are adapted for piercing the skin deeply, and for holding 
on very tenaciously ; so that, in attempting to remove the tick 
by force, the head or rostrum often breaks off and remains 
in the skin. 
Redwater. — Investigations in America led to the discovery 
that ticks were essential to a serious disease of cattle called 
Texan fever. More recently it has become known that 
some of the scourges of cattle in South Africa are brought 
about through their agency. These discoveries have excited 
1 See also page 274 of this Volume. 
