George Henry Falkiner Nuttall and the
Nuttall Tick Catalogue

by James E. Keirans1/

From the turn of the century until his
death in 1937, George H. F. Nuttall
amassed what at the time was the world's
largest tick collection. This collection
was the basis for monographic revisions
of the genera Argas and Ornithodoros
(1908), Ixodes (1911), Haemaphysalis
(1915), and Amblyomma (1926). These
works are still consulted by specialists
and, although outdated, the Amblyomma
revision remains the best published work
on that genus.

He

Nuttall was in a unique position with
regard to the collection of ticks.
personally collected, but that was a
secondary source of material. As Direc-

tor of the Molteno Institute for Research
in Parasitology, Cambridge University, he
had access to collections by present and
former students and corresponded with
parasitologists throughout the world.
He also exchanged tick specimens with
most of the leading tick workers of the
day, including L. G. Neumann, W. Dönitz,
H. de B. Aragão, E. Brumpt, and R. A.
Cooley. Readers of the scientific publi-
cations "Parasitology" and the "Journal
of Hygiene," both of which he edited,
were acquainted with his numerous publi-
cations on ticks and sent him samples
for identification. More importantly,
this was the era of the greatest expan-
sion of the British Colonial Empire and
the time of the formation of the Entomo-
logical Research Committee (Tropical
Africa), later expanded to the Imperial

1/ Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Epidemiology Branch, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, Hamilton, Mont. 59840; now in HHS, Entomology Department, National Museum of Natural History, Museum Support Center, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560.

Research entomologist (medical),

Bureau of Entomology and now the Commonwealth Institute of Entomology. This committee began the first systematic collection and study of insects and other arthropods injurious to man, animals, and crops in Africa (Anon., 1909; Shipley, 1910). Nuttall was a member of this committee and was responsible for all tick identifications.

However, all this access to huge tick collections would have been in vain had it not been for Nuttall's meticulous recordkeeping. Each collection received a Nuttall number, and all data were put on labels kept with the ticks in alcohol; numerically, the data were entered in his tick catalogue. The large number of ticks from collectors throughout the world, combined with Nuttall's detailed accurate recordkeeping and his taxonomic expertise, led to a tick collection unrivaled in its day.

After Nuttall's death in 1937, Cambridge University presented his tick collection to the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) with the single stipulation that it remain a separate entity as--The Nuttall Tick Collection--and not be incorporated into the general collection. Various investigators have studied parts of Nuttall's collection when they pertained to species groups in which they had an interest, but the entire collection has never been revised and updated. Since his death, taxonomic concepts have changed within the Ixodoidea and their numerous vertebrate hosts. In addition, the emergence of scores of new nations, especially in the post-World War II period, requires an updating of all locality data associated with the Nuttall collection.

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In collaboration with H. Thierfelder
(1895-97), he carried out the first
successful experiments on life under
aseptic conditions. In these investi-
gations, guinea pigs delivered by
Caesarean section were kept alive and
fed in a specially devised chamber under
bacteria-free conditions.

In 1897, Nuttall turned his attention to
the role of arthropods in the spread of
disease, a subject to which he devoted
his later life. In 1899, he published
his well-known paper "On the Role of
Insects, Arachnids and Myriapods as
Carriers in the Spread of Bacterial and
Parasitic Diseases of Man and Animals,
which contains an exhaustive critical
and historical review of the entire
subject. Soon afterward (1900-01), he
became interested in the history of
malaria in England and in collaboration
with L. Cobbett, T. Strangeways, and
others undertook a survey of the distri-
bution of the genus Anopheles in England.
He found that three species of these
mosquitoes were in all districts that
were formerly malarious. The disappear-
ance of malaria in England was therefore
not due to the extinction of Anopheles.
In collaboration with A. E. Shipley, he
carried out an important investigation
on the structure and biology of
Anopheles, which is still considered a
classic.

About the same time (1901), Nuttall turned his interest to precipitin reactions. He devoted the next 3 years to studying the application of the precipitin reaction to phylogenetic relationships among vertebrates. In 1904, he published his classic monograph "Blood Immunity and Blood Relationship," incorporating the results of an extensive investigation of precipitin tests carried out on the blood of about 600 species of animals. This investigation clearly established the correlation between the antigenic relationships of animal sera and the zoological relationships of the species. It threw a new light on the study of the phylogenetic relationships in the animal kingdom and provided also a new method for identifying the character of minute

traces of blood, a procedure that has had notable applications in forensic medicine.

After the publication of this monograph, Nuttall began his investigations on diseases transmitted to animals by ticks. By means of infected ticks (Haemaphysalis leachi) sent to him by C. P. Lounsbury from South Africa, he succeeded in infecting dogs with the agent of piroplasmosis, a disease unknown in England. This was the first case of investigating a disease imported by an infected vector. An important result of this study, which had great economic importance, was the discovery of the curative property of trypan blue for piroplasmosis in dogs, cattle, and sheep. This study was followed by an extensive investigation of the anatomy, biology, life history, and systematics of ticks, carried out in collaboration with C. Warburton and L. E. Robinson. The results of these investigations are incorporated in numerous papers and in the monographic study of ticks that occupied him on and off during the remaining years of his life. During this investigation Nuttall acquired a very large collection of ticks from all parts of the world, at that time the largest in existence and rich in type specimens.

Most of his research interest during and
after World War I was in the study of
the Anoplura, their life history,
biology, anatomy, and the problems of
combating the spread of these parasites.

In his early life Nuttall had traveled in Mexico, Cuba, and North America, and it was probably during this period that he became interested in natural science. His uncle, Tiburcio Parrott, gave him his first microscope and started him in making and preparing microscopic slide mounts of all varieties of animals and plants. This was perhaps the initial event in Nuttall's scientific career.

Nuttall's scientific work shows that he
possessed the attributes of the acute
observer, the experimental scientist,
and the naturalist to a remarkable

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