HIHUDINEA OE LEECHES. 85 



in the leech. This feast will last the worm for a year. Leeches 

 are long-lived animals, not maturing until four or five years 

 old, and live for as much as twenty years. They inhabit 

 ponds, ditches, and springs, and flourish on the bottom mud. 

 The young seem to be very partial to running water. This 

 horse-leech is met with over most of Europe and in North 

 Africa, and is extremely troublesome to horses in Syria. It 

 does not live on the skin, but enters the mouth, nose, &c., of 

 horses as they are drinking, and seizes hold of the mucous mem- 

 brane, which it lacerates. They have been found in the mouth, 

 pharynx, nasal fossae, larynx, and vagina. So much blood is 

 sometimes withdrawn that the animals are kiUed. 



The Medical Leech {H. medidiialis) used to be applied very 

 plentifully for bleeding, but now is seldom employed in this 

 country for that purpose. It is still bred in large numbers in 

 ponds in France, where it is fed by putting old horses into the 

 ponds, upon which it ravenously feeds and soon kUls. 



Land-leeches also occur in some regions, especially Ceylon. 

 Tennent, in his account of the island, tells us that he has seen 

 blood flowing over the edge of Europeans' shoes from their 

 innumerable bites. In England leeches are seldom troublesome 

 to any great extent. 



