TICK, the popular name of a great number of acarides (see Acanns), forming a sec tion called suctoria, having the mouth in the form of a sucker, with no apparent man dibles. They live by sucking the juices of plants and animals. Some of them are aquatic. The harvest-bug (q.v.) is a well-known example of the auctorial acarides. It belongs to a family called leptida. The name Ticino is more particularly given to the family izodida. They abound in almost all parts of the world, but chiefly in warm countries, in which they are very troublesome pests. Many of them live in woods, attached to branches, but are ready to attach themselves to animals, which sometimes suffer greatly from their numbers, their blood-sucking powers, and the inflammation. which they cause. The tampan (q v.) is a very troublesome tick of s. Africa. The carapata of Brazil is scarcely less annoying. It infests dry bushy places, clusters of many hundreds being found clinging to very slender twigs, and they instantly transfer them selves to any horse, ox, or other quadruped which comes in contact with them, burying their serrated suckers in its skin, so that they cannot be withdrawn without considerable force. If not taken off, they go on increasing in size, till they become as large as a horse
bean, or even larger. Whole herds of cattle sometimes perish from the exhaustion. which they cause. Wet weather, however, soon kills them, and an animal made to swim across a river, is almost freed from them at once. Travelers in the interior of Brazil are sometimes obliged to pick hundreds off their own bodies before retiring to rest for the night. —The DOG TICK (Ixocles plumbeus) is common in Britain, abounding on. ferns in fir plantations, etc., in many places in autumn, and attaching itself to dogs, Oxen, and other animals, sometimes even to man. It is in form and size like a grain of linseed, oval, shining, reddish, with a pale margin. The body swells to the size of a small horse-bean after the tick has attached itself to an animal, and the wound is attended with much inflammation and pain. Tortoises have ticks peculiar to them, which adhere to their neck, and by the thickness of their leathery coat, are preserved from being crushed when the head is retracted within the carapace.