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 M. BOSC wrote, that he obtained his information from travellers to the further east, and has connected with the habitat universally ascribed to them from old KNOX’S work (Part 1. chap. vi.) a meagre description, more properly belonging to the land leech of Batavia or Japan.  In all likelihood, therefore, there may be a H.  Boscii, distinct from the H.  Ceylanica.  That which is found in Ceylon is round, a little flattened on the inferior surface, largest at the anal extremity, thence gradually tapering forward, and with the anal sucker composed of four rings, and wider in proportion than in other species.

[Illustration:  EYES AND TEETH OF THE LAND LEECH OF CEYLON]