but to expedite the healing of the wounds.  In moving, the land leeches have the power of planting one extremity on the earth and raising the other perpendicularly to watch for their victim.  Such is their vigilance and instinct, that on the approach of a passer-by to a spot which they infest, they may be seen amongst the grass and fallen leaves on the edge of a native path, poised erect, and preparing for their attack on man and horse.  On descrying their prey they advance rapidly by semicircular strides, fixing one end firmly and arching the other forwards, till by successive advances they can lay hold of the traveller’s foot, when they disengage themselves from the ground and ascend his dress in search of an aperture to enter.  In these encounters the individuals in the 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, their hands being 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 edge 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 of life.  Both Marshall and Davy mention, that during the marches 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 of them perished.[3]

[Footnote 1: 

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

Haemadipsa Ceylanica, Bosc.  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.  THUNBEBG, 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