360 Leech-lore. 



from being constant ; if one observes a great quantity of leeches 

 placed in a vessel, one would always perceive a number of these 

 annelids remaining motionless at the bottom of the reservoir, 

 and others rising to the surface of the water. However, a cure 

 in the neighbourhood of Tours, announced in the public papers 

 of 1774, that one could know every morning, by means of 

 leeches, the weather of the next day. Briolet, Leroi, Toudouze 

 and Valmont de Bomare, repeated these experiments and ob- 

 tained no satisfactory results ; Vitet was not more fortunate, 

 and it has been the same with every one who has tried the 

 employment of these pretended animal barometers. A modern 

 author has therefore gone much too far when he has asserted 

 that leeches replace with advantage the tube of Toricelli, and 

 the opinion of the poet Cowper (as quoted by Johnson) is also 

 exaggerated when he proclaims the instinct of leeches to be 

 preferable to all the barometers in the world. It appears, 

 however, that in Champagne, on the borders of the Lorraine, 

 these clumsy instruments (ces instruments grossiers) had become 

 common ; a decanter, a small quantity of water, and five or six 

 leeches being all that was necessary. Persons even carried their 

 confidence in these indicators of the weather to the point of 

 placing in the bottles a graduated wooden scale for the pur- 

 pose of marking the different degrees of elevation to which the 

 leeches attained. Charles Bonnet, who has perceived nothing 

 regular or harmonious between the movements of the leeches 

 and the variations of the atmosphere, has suspected that if these 

 animals are not good barometers, they might serve as very sen- 

 sitive thermometers ; the assertion of the naturalist of Genoa 

 is scarcely worthy of more serious consideration than the dis- 

 covery of the cure of Tours.'" That leeches are, to some extent, 

 affected by changes in the weather is a fact which we have 

 witnessed ourselves, and where no other barometer can be had 

 they can be employed in this respect by those who are not 

 scrupulous about particulars or any amount of accuracy. 



We all know how what is termed a mania in some parti- 

 cular subject breaks out from time to time, possessing the minds 

 of multitudes with some epidemic. We all remember the 

 Cochin China mania, the aquarium mania, for instance, but 

 what will the fair sex say to the fact that in 1824 there existed 

 in France a leech mania ! The most enthusiastic admirer of 

 Cochins, or of sea anemones, would never have thought of car- 

 rying her admiration for her pets so high as to wear on her 

 dress representatives of these animals ; but we learn from Fee 

 that there might have been seen at that period elegant ladies 

 wearing dresses a la Broussais, on the trimming of which were 

 mitations of leeches ! M. Broussais was a physician, no doubt 

 the great patron of leeches, as Mr. Gosse is of sea-anemones. 



