e rear of a party of travellers in the jungle
invariably fare worst, as the leeches, once warned of their approach,
congregate with singular celerity. Their size is so insignificant, and
the wound they make is so skilfully punctured, that both are generally
imperceptible, and the first intimation of their onslaught is the
trickling of the blood or a chill feeling of the leech when it begins to
hang heavily on the skin from being distended by its repast. Horses are
driven wild by them, and stamp the ground in fury to shake them from
their fetlocks, to which they hang in bloody tassels. The bare legs of
the palankin bearers and coolies are a favourite resort; and, as their
hands are too much engaged to be spared to pull them off, the leeches
hang like bunches of grapes round their ankles; and I have seen the
blood literally flowing over the ledge of a European's shoe from their
innumerable bites. In healthy constitutions the wounds, if not
irritated, generally heal, occasioning no other inconvenience than a
slight inflammation and itching; but in those with a bad state of body,
the punctures, if rubbed, are liable to degenerate into ulcers, which
may lead to the loss of limb or even of life. Both Marshall and Davy
mention, that during the march of troops in the mountains, when the
Kandyans were in rebellion, in 1818, the soldiers, and especially the
Madras sepoys, with the pioneers and coolies, suffered so severely from
this cause that numbers perished.[3]

[Footnote 1: _Haemadipsa Ceylanica_. Bose. Blainv. These pests are not,
however, confined to Ceylon, they infest the lower ranges of the
Himalaya.--HOOKER, vol. i. p. 107; vol. ii. p. 54. THUNBERG, who records
(_Travels_, vol. iv. p. 232) having seen them in Ceylon, likewise met
with them in the forests and slopes of Batavia. MARSDEN (_Hist_. p. 311)
complains of them dropping on travellers in Sumatra. KNORR found them at
Japan; and it is affirmed that they abound in islands farther to the
eastward. M. GAY encountered them in Chili.--(MOQUIN-TANDON,
_Hirudinees_, p. 211, 346). It is very doubtful, however, whether all
these are to be referred to one species. M. DE BLAINVILLE, under _H.
Ceylanica_, in the _Dict. de Scien. Nat_. vol. xlvii. p. 271, quotes M.
Bosc as authority for the kind, which that naturalist describes being
"rouges et tachetees;" which is scarcely applicable to the Singhalese
species. It is more than probable therefore, considering the period at
which