Ha! see him spring out of his chair as though
electrified. Watch how, regardless of the laws of buttons, he
frantically tears his trowsers from his limbs; he has him! no he
hasn't! - yes he has! - no - no, positively he cannot get him
off. It is a tick no bigger than a grain of sand, but his bite
is like a red-hot needle boring into the skin. If all the royal
family had been present, he could not have refrained from tearing
off his trowsers.
The naturalist has been out the whole morning collecting, and a
pretty collection he has got - a perfect fortune upon his legs
alone. There are about a hundred ticks who have not yet
commenced to feed upon him; there are also several fine specimens
of the large flat buffalo tick; three or four leeches are
enjoying themselves on the juices of the naturalist; these he had
not felt, although they had bitten him half an hour before; a
fine black ant has also escaped during the recent confusion,
fortunately without using his sting.
Oil is the only means of loosening the hold of a tick; this
suffocates him and he dies; but he leaves an amount of
inflammation in the wound which is perfectly surprising in so
minute an insect. The bite of the smallest species is far more
severe than that of the large buffalo or the deer tick, both of
which are varieties.
Although the leeches in Ceylon are excessively annoying, and
numerous among the dead leaves of the jungle and the high grass,
they are easily guarded against by means of leech-gaiters: these
are wide stockings, made of drill or some other light and close
material, which are drawn over the foot and trowsers up to the
knee, under which they are securely tied. There are three
varieties of the leech : the small jungle leech, the common leech
and the stone leech. The latter will frequently creep up the
nostrils of a dog while he is drinking in a stream, and, unlike
the other species, it does not drop off when satiated, but
continues to live in the dog's nostril. I have known a leech of
this kind to have lived more than two months in the nose of one
of my hounds; he was so high up that I could only see his tail
occasionally when lie relaxed to his full length, and injections
of salt and water had no effect on him. Thus I could not relieve
the dog till one day when the leech descended, and I observed the
tail working in and out of the nostril; I then extracted him in
the usual way with the finger and thumb and the tail of the coat.
