LAND-LEECHES— THE TSETSE. 



587 



many tropical regions. A large American species called Garapata {Ixodes sanguisuga) 

 fixes on the legs of travelers, and gradually buries its whole head in the skin, which 

 the body, disgustingly distended with blood, is unable to follow. On being violently 

 removed, the former remains in the wound, and often produces painful sores. The ^ 

 Indians returning in the evening from the forest or from their field labor generally 

 bring some of these creatures along with them, swollen to the size of hazel-nuts. 

 These ticks seem to have no predilection for any particular animal, but indiscrimi- 

 nately fasten on all, not even sparing the toad or the lizard. 



Though countless hosts of ticks infest the Ceylonese jungle, though musquitoes 

 without number swarm over the lower country, yet the Land-Leeches which beset the 

 traveler in the rising grounds are a still more detested plague. In size they are about 

 an inch in length, and as fine as a common knitting-needle, but capable of distention 

 till they equal a quill in thickness and attain a length of nearly two inches. Their 

 structure is so flexible that they can insinuate themselves through the meshes of the 

 finest stocking, not only seizing on the feet and ankles, but ascending to the back and 

 throat, and fastening on the tenderest parts of the body. The coffee planters who 

 live among these pests are obliged, in order to exclude them, to envelop their legs in 

 "leech-gaiters," made of closely woven cloth. "In moving, they have the power of 

 planting one extremity on the earth and raising the other perpendicularly to watch for 

 their victim. Such is their vigilance and instinct that, on the approach of a passer-by 

 to a spot which they infest, they may be seen amongst the grass and fallen lea-ves, on 

 the edge of a native path, poised erect, and preparing for their attack on man and 

 horse. On descrying their prey, they advance rapidly by semicircular strides, fixing 

 one end firmly and arching the other forwards, till by successive advances they can lay 

 hold of the traveler's foot, when they disengage themselves from the ground and 

 ascend his dress in search of an aperture to enter. In these encounters the individuals 

 in the rear of a party of travelers in the jungle invariably fare worst, as the leeches, 

 once warned of their approach, congregate with singular celerity. Their size is so 

 insignificant, and the wound they make so skilfully 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 favorite 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 punctures, 

 if rubbed, are liable to degenerate into ulcers, which may lead to the loss of limb or 

 of life. 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, suflTered so severely from this cause that numbers of them perished." 



Among the many noxious insects destructive to the property of man, there is, 

 perhaps, none more remarkable than the South African Tsetse-fly (Glossina morsi- 

 tans)j whose peculiar buzz, when once heard, can never be forgotten by the traveler 



