252 THE INSECT PLAGUES OF THE TROPICAL WORLD 



once warned of their approach congregate with singular celerity. 

 Their size is so insignificant, and the wound they make so skil- 

 fully punctured, that both are certainly 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 punc- 

 tures, 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 march of the 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." 



Dr. Hooker also mentions the land-leech as infesting the 

 southern slopes of the Himalaya, so that it ranges over a vast 

 extent of territory. 



Among the many noxious insects destructive to the property 

 of man, there is, perhaps, none more remarkable than the South 

 African Tsetse-fly {Glosslna morsitans), whose peculiar buzz 

 when once heard can never be forgotten by the traveller whose 

 means of locomotion are domestic animals ; for it is w^ell known 

 that the bite of this poisonous insect is certain death to the ox, 

 horse, and dog. Fortunately it is limited to particular districts, 

 frequently infesting one bank of a river while the other contains 

 not a single specimen, or else travelling in South Africa would 

 be utterly impossible, and we should now know no more of Lake 

 Ngami or the Zambesi than we did thirty years since. In one 

 journey Dr. Livingstone lost no less than forty-three fine oxen 

 by the bite of the tsetse. A party of Englishmen once attempted 

 to reach Libebe, but they had only proceeded seven or eight 



