358 GC. O. WHITMAN. 
eight grains are taken with saké (rice-wine) to cure “sessho 
totsu ” (which was interpreted to me as pains resulting from 
broken limbs). If the pain continues, a second dose is taken, 
which soldom fails to bring relief ! 
In external use the Leech is applied by the aid of a bamboo 
tube.? 
The Diagnostic Value of the Annuli.—In the past 
descriptions of Leeches, there has been a growing recognition 
of the fact, that the number, character, and metameric 
combination of the annuli furnish important marks for the 
determination and comparison of species. Gratiolet and 
Grube are the only authors, however, who have shown any 
very clear appreciation of this point. The general neglect in 
this respect is doubtless attributable to the difficulty in counting 
and describing accurately the annuli on the two ends of the 
body, as well as to a lack of appreciation of their importance 
for systematic purposes. The result is that, up to the present 
moment not a single description of any Medicinal Leech has 
been given with sufficient completeness for a close and full 
comparison of even its more important external characters 
with those of other species. More than this, it would be im- 
possible, from the innumerable monographs, memoirs, and 
stray papers on the Medicinal Leech, to patch up a description 
that would fully meet the obvious requirements for a critical 
comparison of any two species. I am well aware of the import 
of these statements, for my experience has given me a keen 
sense of their meaning. So far as the matter in hand is con- 
cerned, I venture to say that by far the greater number of the 
species-diagnoses that have been showered upon us from time 
to time, have been so superficially and slovenly done, that it 
would puzzle the perpetrators to identify the species they 
profess to have described. I wish here to insist on the im- 
portance of a thorough study of the annuli of the Leech, par- 
ticularly those of the abbreviated terminal somites, as a means 
of making clear the precise position and relation of the parts 
1 For these references to Japanese literature, I am indebted to Mr. Tanada, 
who was my assistant in the zoological laboratory at Tokio. 
