ON LEECHES. 
Ill 
to it do ; and, from all the experience we have had ourselves, we 
should say there was a good deal of truth in this notion. Still, 
horsemen — ay, and good horsemen, too ! — find they durst not ride 
upon wood as they can ride upon granite or cobble pavement : 
indeed, we know men who, in the hunting field, are “ out-and- 
outers,” and yet, place them and their horses upon slippery wood, 
and they are as helpless and as timid as children. It is lament- 
able to hear the remarks of persons who once took a pride in 
riding their pet hackneys about town, — how, all their plea- 
sure is now taken away from them, and they are, against their 
inclinations, forced either to walk or to drive up and down the 
streets. Where all this opposition of riding and paving will end 
we can hardly at present presume to say : our opinion is, that the 
wood pavement — and for other r/easons as well as those we have 
here stated — is not doomed to last a great number of years, unless 
it be, as a surface for tread and fulcrum , greatly modified from 
what it is in its present condition. 
ON THE LEECHES WHICH FIX THEMSELVES AND 
LIVE IN THE MOUTHS OF HORSES, AND THE 
MISCHIEF WHICH THEY EFFECT. 
By M. J. B. C. Rodet, 
Professor at the Royal Veterinary School at Toulouse. 
All that concerns the medical history of leeches must be parti- 
cularly interesting to medical men, who employ them in the treat- 
ment of a very great number of diseases. I do not then doubt, 
that, by publishing some observations which I have made on 
leeches in warm climates, I shall equally interest veterinary 
surgeons, to whom, indeed, this Essay is more particularly ad- 
dressed. 
Nothing is more frequent in Spain, and particularly in hot 
seasons, than to see leeches in the horses’ mouths, and adhering 
and living there a shorter or longer time. During my prolonged 
residence in that country, which I made with our troops from 1808 
to 1813, I was enabled, by frequent observation of these cases, to 
collect sufficient facts to become the foundation of a Memoir on the 
leech. I committed my remarks to paper at the time, but I lost 
them by one of those accidents inseparable from the military pro- 
fession. 
After our return to France I met with an Essay on the same 
