216 LITTLE FOLKS 
In the south of France, Leeches are cultivated, and they have 
cows for food. The unfortunate cow is driven into the water, 
where the blood-thirsty creatures are confined, ajid they at once 
proceed to take their meal. When she has lost as much blood as 
the owner thinks she can endure, she is driven out, and sent off to 
pasture to get well and strong again. Then she comes back and 
goes in again, and so she goes on till she dies. 
One Leech farmer who owned eight acres of marsh, had two 
hundred cows to feed eight hundred thousand Leeches. 
They tried to use donkeys for food, as they are not so valu- 
able as cows, but that spirited animal refused to be eaten, prancing 
about and kicking. He was excused. 
Leeches are said to drink five times their own weight, and 
cause as much more blood to flow. They will take all the blood from 
an animal, if he does not get them off. I read of a lizard nearly 
a foot long, which was thrown into a Leech pond. In a few minutes 
it was covered with the horrid creatures, and before long, it was 
nothing but a skeleton. Sometimes a frog will leap out of a pond 
covered with these tormenting creatures, and roll in the dirt till he 
gets them off. If he don't get them all off, he's a dead frog. Some- 
times an unfortunate creature will swallow a Leech, and then he has 
a nice tenant in his stomach. 
In France, where these interesting creatures are cultivated 
quite extensively, the gatherer wears a linen bag around his waist. 
He is a forlorn and dreadful looking object, hollow eyes, white lips, 
and altogether, looking like one just up from a bed of sickness. 
If a Leech is allowed to eat all he wants, he can take enough 
to last him a year, and that is the reason why they are always in 
demand. It is so hard to coax them to take any more, that it is 
less trouble to take fresh ones every time. 
I have not mentioned what they are used for — I hope you don't 
know 7 by sad experience — but doctors use them to draw blood from 
people. 
Leeches change their skin every few days. The eggs of these 
creatures are wrapped up in a little cocoon not quite an inch long, 
each one containing from six to sixteen eggs. They are put into 
clay banks. The color of the Leech used by the doctors is green, 
spotted with black. He hides himself in the mud, if the weather 
is bad, and when the frost comes, he buries himself very deeply in 
the same material. 
