Fig. 63.—Haemadipsa zeylanica (land-leeches), on the earth. (From Tennant.)
Horses are driven wild by them, and have poor means of reprisal. They stamp their hooves violently on the ground in the hope of ridding their fetlocks of these tangled masses of bloody tassels. The bare legs of the natives, who carry palanquins, are particularly subject to the bites of these bloodthirsty brutes, as the palanquin-bearer has no free hand to pick them off. Tennant writes that he has actually seen the blood welling over the boots of a European from the innumerable bites of these land-leeches; and it is on record that during the march of the troops in Ceylon, when the Kandyans were in rebellion, many of the Madras sepoys, and their coolies, perished from their innumerable and united attacks. It is also certain that men falling asleep over-night in a Cingalese forest have, so to speak, ‘woke up dead’ next morning. These sleepers have succumbed during the night to the repeated attacks of these intolerable and insatiable pests.
Dr. Charles Hose, for many years Resident at Sarawak, has told me that on approaching the edges of woods in Borneo you can hear every leaf rustling, and this is due to the fact that the eager leech, perched on its posterior sucker on the edge of each leaf in the undergrowth, is swaying its body up and down, yearning with an ‘unutterable yearning,’ to get at the integument of man or some other mammal.
Landor, who wrote, I think, the best book about our adventure into Thibet some ten years ago, entitled ‘Lhassa’ (London, 1905), says of Sikkim:—
The game here is very scanty: the reason is not uninteresting. For dormant or active, visible or invisible, the curse of Sikkim waits for its warm-blooded visitor. The leeches of these lovely valleys have been described again and again by travellers. Unfortunately the description, however true in every particular, has, as a rule, but wrecked the reputation of the chronicler. Englishmen cannot understand these pests of the mountain-side, which appear in March, and exist, like black threads fringing every leaf, till September kills them in myriad millions.
To remove them a bowl of warm milk at the cow’s nose, a little slip-knot, and a quick hand are all that is required. Fourteen or fifteen successively have been thus taken from the nostrils of one unfortunate heifer.
When fully fed, a process which takes some time with Haemadipsa zeylanica, the individual leeches drop off; and they can be made to loosen their hold by the application of a solution of salt or of weak acid. Attempts to pull them off should be avoided, as parts of the biting apparatus are then often left in the wound, and these may cause inflammation and suppuration. Dr. R. J. Drummond, who has had experience of these land-leeches in Ceylon, has told me that the bite is often septic and that it often leads to a serious abscess which is long in healing. He recommends pushing a match, which has been dipped into carbolic acid, well home into the sinus made by the leech’s head.
When winter approaches the leeches die down with extraordinary rapidity, and the species ‘carry on’ over the cold-weather period in the form of eggs laid in cocoons on the ground, under leaves, or other débris. Hence no land-leech ever sees its offspring, and no land-leech has ever known a mother’s care.