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TICKS 
311 
in length and 6 mm. in breadth. It resembles the 
common bed-bug and lives in huts, retiring into cracks 
in walls or floors or in the grass-covered roof during the 
day and becomes active at night ; then, if the 
opportunity offers, it attacks man and beast. 
This species is common along lines of travel and 
usually abounds in rest-houses; it is apt to get into 
bedding or sleeping mats which remain for the night in 
rest-houses. Old camping-grounds should always be 
avoided. 
Ticks suffer from the uncertainty of finding a suitable 
host, but this is counterbalanced by their extraordinary 
powers of fasting, for they can remain several months 
without food. 
In recent years ticks have acquired some importance; 
it has been proved by a series of most careful and 
brilliant researches that these parasites are capable of 
conveying a serious disease to cattle and to man. In 
order to appreciate the manner in which these diseases 
are inoculated into animals, it is necessary to be familiar 
with the main features in the life-history of ticks set 
forth in the preceding paragraphs. 
It is an important feature in tick disease that young 
ticks hatched in the, laboratory can communicate the 
disease. This means that the parasite can pass from 
the mother-tick to the egg. This fact was discovered 
by Smith and Kilborne in their investigation of Eed- 
water, or Texas fever of cattle. 
Tick fever is defined as a specific disease caused 
by the presence in the blood of a minute parasite 
or hsematozoon, known as a spirochseta, which is intro¬ 
duced by the bite of a tick known as Ornithodoros 
mouhata. The disease can also- be conveyed by in¬ 
fected blood. 
Tick fever was described by Dr. Livingstone, from 
observations made in the basin of the Zambesi, but it 
has been met with in the Congo Free State, Central 
Africa, German East Africa, and in Uganda. It was 
