the Ceylon leeches. I hope it may afford to my readers the same amount of amusement and information that I have myself derived from its perusal. "Some of them are as fine as needles; all of a light clear brown, with the usual yellow or pale stripe. Leaves fall from the trees on the jungle paths, and it is among these leaves, at parts where the jungle overhead is so thick that the leaves are always moist, that they principally abound; but after a shower, even the places formerly driest have plenty of them. In the mornings and evenings the grass all over the cleared country abounds with them. They are not found near Columbo, that is, not within fifteen or twenty miles of it; the same is the case in many other parts of the low flat country, where the moisture is too rapidly and too completely dried up. Persons say that they drop upon you from the trees. I do not believe this, and I think the error has arisen from finding them on the neck, to which they have ascended in their search of a hole to creep in by. I have often watched their manœuvres, when I chanced to be walking the last of a party. Look ahead, and not one is to be seen; but the moment the first person disturbs the leaves, multitudes of little heads appear, as if the ground abounded with the nests of polypi, twisting their tentacula about. The celerity with which they attach themselves to the boot or shoe of the next comer would surprise you; the instant they feel it, they let go their hold of the leaves, are transferred to the shoe, and then on they go in search of any cranny for entrance which the unwary traveller may have left. The variety of their attitudes Fig. 49. while thus engaged may be imagined rom the annexed sketch (Fig. 49.) You never feel them until, having saturated themselves with blood, their weight begins to make them drag on the wound; when empty they have no weight, and do not drag. Their mouth is placed obliquely to the axis of the body. I could perceive no teeth; the wound is irregular, extremely small, and rather elongated; the disc at the postal extremity is flat and round, perfectly smooth, and the body contracts rather suddenly above it. On going along with these gentry adhering to you, of course you strike off as many as you can conveniently get at, but every two hundred yards you are forced to stop wherever you can find a large stone to stand on, or a bare patch of the path, so that you can guard against any fresh attacks, and then you begin to weed off. The natives use a half lime (lemon), the acid juice of which curls them up in a twinkling; or a drop of saliva from their mouths, when chewing tobacco, has the same effect. The planters touch them with the ash at the lighted end of a cigar, or tie a piece of the dried leaf of tobacco dipped in water across their shoe. Either mode is perfectly effectual, and they twist about in fifty shapes, instantly letting go. In travelling through the jungle, the planters use leech-gaiters, which have feet like a stocking, are made of duck or coarse calico, and tie above the knee. I tied my trousers tight round my boots, or better still, the boots tight round the trousers, as they seldom descend, but still keep ascending : this, however, is not always to be depended on. Horses and cattle get quite mad with them, and stamp like devils. There is one nearly allied species, larger and longer, which frequents the edges of pools, and gets into the nostrils of black cattle, where they stick for weeks, often destroying the animals, which sink from loss of blood and the local irritation: it is of a sordid brown, and has no lateral band. I forgot to say that at every step the jungle-leech takes, it pokes its nose up in the air, moving it about as if in search of a whiff of wind from the unhappy victim; and I never could ascertain by what faculty they became cognizant of his presence, as they seem to come up in all directions, irrespective of what way the wind blows, from a distance of about eight or ten feet, which they could traverse in about as many minutes. When they have got their full supply of blood, they do not drop off, unless inconvenienced by the friction of the clothes against them, but seem disposed to stick until they are ready for a fresh feed. They seem to select, when they can, the most tender, juicy parts, so that after they are detached the wound bleeds very freely, your stockings being often saturated. In the same way they always seek to attach themselves to the horse's fetlock, and get to the inner side of his leg above; and as the Indian horses have all extensive cutaneous circulation, like our high-breds, I have often traversed the jungle with the legs of my grey horse brilliant red from the knees down, with here and there a white longitudinal streak—a very cardinal !" CHAPTER XIV. LEECHES AND EARTH-WORMS. Let I HAVE been spinning what sailors would call "a long yarn" about leeches, but I have not yet done with them. They stick to me, not bodily, but mentally. The contemplation of their structure and habits suggests the reflection, "Surely these humble annelids exercise, under certain circumstances, an important influence over man himself." A gentleman who resided for some time among the coffee plantations of the island of Ceylon told me that when he descended to the lower grounds, and wanted in the course of his wayfaring to eat his dinner undisturbed by the leeches, he found the best plan was to wade into a river or other water, sit down on a stone, if he could find one, and there enjoy his repast secure from molestation. some who live at home, and "fare sumptuously every day," think how great must be the annoyance that could make such a situation as a stone in a river's bed a place of comfort. A satirist, with a little stretch of imagination, might tell us of some warrior leech returning to his companions in the jungle, and describing, in a tone of exultation, how he had scaled the defences, sucked the blood of a pale-faced son of Europe, and driven him from their domain; or how a medicinal leech had collected her descendants around her, and pointed out how carefully the great "two-legged animal without feathers" attended to their wants, and at times prepared for them a banquet on the fairest and plumpest of his own species. A grandmother leech thus detailing the results of her experience might inculcate her conviction that man was surely created for the especial benefit of leeches! Passing from these topics, let us glance at the signification of the word leech in times gone by. It was not confined to the annelid, but applied also to professors or practitioners of the art of healing. Thus we have in Spenser "The learned leech His cunning hand 'gan to his wounds to lay." Elsewhere the same great poet has introduced the same epithet in lines of deep significance: "A leech which had great insight In that disease of grieved conscience, And well could cure the same; his name was Patience. ↑ The question may naturally be asked, Did the man derive the appellation from the annelid, or the annelid from the man? A friend, who is in my eyes a learned pundit in all such matters, informs me that the epithet in both cases was derived from the same root-a Saxon word which signifies "to heal." The old word "leech-craft" denoted, therefore, the art of healing; and its occurrence in some of our old metrical romances tempts me to linger on my way, and couple this part of my subject with the legendary and historic lore of other days. Among the ancient Germans the women followed the armies to the field, and dressed the wounds of the combatants. Ladies figure not unfrequently as surgeons in the romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as well as in the poems of Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, and later bards. The following passage occurs in Ywaine and Gawin, written in the reign of Richard II. : "Twa maydins with him thai left, Again, in the celebrated Morte d'Arthur, we read that the knight Sir Tristram, having been sorely wounded with a poisoned spear, King Marke sent "after all manere of leches and surgeons, both unto men and wymmen, and there was none that wold behote hym the lyf." And in the ancient and popular ballad of Sir Cauline, the king applies the term "leeche" to his daughter, when he calls upon her to exercise her skill on behalf of the wounded though victorious knight : "Come down, come down, my daughter deare, Thou art a leeche of skille; Farre lever had I lose half my lands, It is under circumstances somewhat similar that Rebecca is represented as taking charge of the Knight of Ivanhoe. Sir Walter Scott, while he recounts the fact, invests it with new tenderness and elevation. "The idea," he says, "of so young and beautiful a person engaged in attendance on a sick-bed, or in dressing the wound of one of a different sex, was melted away and lost in that of a beneficent being, contributing her effectual aid to relieve pain, and to avert the stroke of death." and But revenons à nos moutons. Let us quit both poetry and romance, learn what arrangement or classification of the annelids has been proposed by Cuvier, and by others who, like him, we regard as our approved good masters." 66 very noble and By Cuvier they were divided into three orders, distinguished by the nature and position of their organs of respiration. In the first of these (Abranchia) there were no external gills; in another, the respiratory organs were at the anterior extremity of the body (Tubicola); in the third, they were placed along the back (Dorsibranchiata). Dr. Milne Edwards, the eminent pupil of Cuvier, made, however, an important change in the system laid down by his great master. He divided the first of these groups into two, thus separating the leeches from the earth-worms. The suctorial discs at either extremity, to which reference has already been made, distinguish the leeches from all others belonging to the class. The absence of these discs, and the presence of a number of minute and almost imperceptible bristles, which assist in progression, form good distinctive characteristics by which the earth-worm and its allies are easily recognized. Its very name implies that it lives in the earth, or, to adopt a more learned mode of expressing the same idea, that it is "terricolous." Others live in the sand of the sea-shore, but the term just used is applied to both. Perhaps some of my young friends are fond of puzzles and perplexing questions. If so, I would ask them to string together three terms, which could define a leech, and suggest one characteristic habit. "A leech is an -Do you give it up?-An Abranchial suctorial Annelid." They may, perhaps, amuse themselves by bearing those three terms in mind, repeating them, and recollecting what they express. If they do so, they will have a clear idea of the characteristics of Order I., the ANNELLATA SUCTORIA—that is to say, of the leeches. And as we have already been attending to their structure and habits, we now bid them good-by, and proceed to— ORDER II.-ANNELLATA TERRICOLA. "Whoever," says Professor Rymer Jones, "has attentively watched the operations of an earth-worm, when busied in burying itself in the earth, must have been struck with the seeming disproportion between the laborious employment in which it is perpetually engaged, and the means provided for enabling it to overcome difficulties apparently insurmountable by any animal, unless provided with limbs of extraordinary construction, and possessed of enormous muscular power. In the mole and the burrowing cricket we at once recognize, in the immense development of the anterior legs, a provision for digging admirably adapted for their subterranean habits, and calculated to throw aside with facility the earth through which they work their way; but in the worms before us, deprived as they appear to be of all external members; feeble and sluggish even to a proverb, where are we to look for that mechanism which enables them to perforate the hard surface of the ground, and to make way for themselves, in the hard and trodden mould, the pathways which they traverse with such astonishing facility and quickness? The explanation is to be found partly in the form of the head, which pierces the ground like a wedge, and partly in the minute bristles with which every ring of the body is endowed. If we pass our hand along the body of the earth-worm, from the head backwards, we are scarcely aware of their presence; but if we reverse the movement, they are at once perceived. This arises from the hooked form, and from the points being directed towards the tail. They take a firm hold on the ground, prevent any retrograde movement, and afford the necessary support for the next advance. The word seta means a bristle; setigerous, bearing or carrying bristles. Substitute this word for "suctorial," in the definition of the leech, and the same terms with this one alteration will apply to the creatures now under consideration. The earth-worm is, therefore, an "abranchial setigerous annelid." The alimentary canal is straight, and very capacious. It is generally found filled with earth; and hence an idea was at one time prevalent, that while other creatures were nourished from the animal and vegetable kingdom, the earth-worm derived its nutriment from the soil itself, or, in other words, from the mineral kingdom. This idea has been long since exploded; it is nourished not by the soil, but by the particles of decaying animal and vegetable matter contained therein. The mouth is furnished with a short proboscis, but is without teeth. In White's Natural History of Selborne-that well-known and delightful volume-the amiable author remarks: "The most insignificant insects and reptiles are of much more consequence, and have much more influence in the economy of nature, than the incurious are aware of; and are mighty in their effect from their minuteness, which renders them less an object of attention, and from their numbers and fecundity. Earth-worms, though in appearance a small and despicable link in the chain of nature, yet, if lost, would make a lamentable chasm. For, to say nothing of half the birds, and some quadrupeds, which are almost entirely supported by them, worms seem to be the great promoters of vegetation, which would proceed but lamely without them, by boring, perforating, and loosening the soil, and rendering it pervious to rains and fibres of plants, by drawing straws and stalks of leaves and twigs into it; and most of all by throwing up such infinite numbers of lumps of earth called worm-casts, which, being their excrement, is a fine manure for grain and grass." The opinions thus advanced by the Rev. Gilbert White, as to the importance and utility of earth-worms, have been confirmed by the observations of Charles Darwin, Esq., and were communicated by him to the Geological Society of London. Not only is the earth-worm useful in rendering the earth permeable to air and water, but it is also a most active and powerful agent in adding to the depth of the surface soil. In a pasture-field, which has long remained undisturbed, not a pebble will be seen, although in an adjoining ploughed field a large proportion of the surface may be composed of loose stones. This difference he attributes to the working of worms, and states his conviction that every particle of earth in old pasture land has passed through their intestines; and hence that, in some senses, the term "animal mould” would be more appropriate than "vegetable mould.” In some fields, which had a few years before been covered with lime, and in others which had been coated with burnt marl and cinders, these substances were found in every case buried to the depth of some inches below the turf, just as if, as the farmers believe, these materials had worked themselves down. From the continuous operation of these unseen and noiseless labourers, it has been estimated that the marl laid upon a field for manure would, in the course of eighty years, be covered with soil to the depth of thirteen inches. Every one who has read Miss Edgeworth's tale of Forester will recollect how much, when in the employment of the gardener, he was pained by |