530 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 192 8 



I can not draw such a peaceful picture of the dreaded tic-polonga 

 {Viper a i-usselH), a beautifully marked, viperlike snake with typicaj 

 poison fangs of the hypodermic-syringe type. 



This snake has a bad habit of lying perdu on or near paths fre- 

 quented by village inhabitants. He is not so good tempered as 

 the cobra and is likely to strike the passer-by. A friend of mine 

 had a narrow escape in this way. Walking home from our hotel 

 a tic-polonga, easily recognized by its variegated, striped skin, struck 

 at him from a neighboring bush and caught the sleeve of his coat. 

 He shook off the reptile, which escaped into the shrubbery. 



The roster of death from poisonous-snake bite in Ceylon is 

 not a long one, and rarely includes a European name. I could 

 not find an account of a single death among the white race from 

 this cause during my stay in the country. I suspect that the wearing 

 of boots, shoes, and heavy clothing has much to do with this record. 

 It is the barefooted, half-naked, and therefore unprotected native 

 who suffers. 



Speaking of the land leech, I have already drawn attention (Ann. 

 of Med. Hist., 1926, p. 441) to the fact that I have on several 

 occasions been successfully phlebotomized by this active little beast 

 during my jungle trips and can testify to its efficiency as a letter 

 of blood. I did not, however, dwell upon the chief danger of 

 the bites from the several hundred " teeth " of this wicked little 

 creature, viz, the secondary infections, ulcers, etc., that follow the 

 triangular incisions made by them unless the wound is promptly 

 and effectively treated — after the copious and persistent blood-flow 

 is arrested — by iodine and collodion. 



One meets with this leech everywhere on the island where the 

 rainfall is sufficient. It is an agile and exceedingly nimble little ani- 

 mal, from 1 to 11/2 inches in length. Attached by a posterior sucker 

 to the top of a grass stem or exposed leaf, it lies in wait, waving 

 about in the air with eyes and smelling apparatus alert, awaiting the 

 passage of its warm-blooded victim. The bite is not painful, but 

 the incision bjeeds freely; indeed the first intimation the host gen- 

 erally has of his visitor's insult is a stream of blood trickling from 

 the point to which the leech has attached itself. 



It is not possible to speak of Ceylon leeches without thinking not 

 only of their medicinal but of their important military and political 

 relations. One of the chief defenses of the ancient Kandyan King- 

 dom, and one explanation of its successful resistance of foreign inva- 

 sion for 300 years after the subjugation of the rest of the island, lies 

 in the vast multitudes of leeches that infested the wet, impassable 

 mountain jungle that lay between the seaboard and Kandy, and 

 through which an invading army must march. As one of many such 

 incidents, in 1553 A. D. a force of Portuguese soldiers, on their way 



