and flat when growing to the leaves, the tick catches man or beast
brushing by, fattens rapidly, and, at the end-of a week's good living,
drops off, _plena cruoris."_ When on trees, Belt says, they
instinctively place themselves on the extreme tips of leaves and shoots,
with their hind legs stretching out, each foot armed with two hooks or
claws, with which to lay hold of any animal brushing by. During this
wretched, incom-plete existence (from which, in most cases, it is never
destined to emerge), its greatest length is about one-fourth of an inch;
but where it fastens itself to an animal the abdomen increases to a
globe as big as a medium-sized Barcelona nut. Being silvery-grey or
white in colour, it becomes, when thus distended, very conspicuous on
any dark surface. I have frequently seen black, smooth-haired dogs with
their coats, turned into a perfect garden of these white spider-flowers
or mushrooms. The white globe is leathery, and nothing can injure it;
and the poor beast cannot rub, bite, or scratch it off, as it is
anchored to his flesh by eight sets of hooks and a triangle of teeth.

The ticks inhabiting regions rich in bird and insect life, but with few
mammals, are in the same condition as mosquitoes, as far as the supply
of blood goes; and, like the mosquitoes, they are compelled and able to
exist without the nourishment best suited to them. They are nature's
miserable castaways, parasitical tribes lost in a great dry wilderness
where no blood is; and every marsh-born mosquito, piping of the hunger
gnawing its vitals, and every forest tick, blindly feeling with its
grappling-irons for the beast that never brushes by, seems to tell us of
a world peopled with gigantic forms, mammalian and reptilian, which once
afforded abundant pasture to the parasite, and which the parasite
perhaps assisted to overthrow.

It is almost necessary to transport oneself to the vast tick-infested