. The animal creation: a popular introduction to zoology. Zoology. ANNELIDA. The tribe of leeelies is very numerous ; they all feed at the expense of other animals; they attach themselves to fishes and frogs; some- times they devour molluscs, worms, or the larvae of insects. Few animal substances are rejected; all kinds of fish, dead or alive, seem acceptable. Entering the larger fresh-water shells, the leech takes up its abode, an uninvited vis^itor, and remains until it has emptied them of their contents. They even devour other leeches. Sir J. Dalyell saw one half swallowed by a horse-leech
. The animal creation: a popular introduction to zoology. Zoology. ANNELIDA. The tribe of leeelies is very numerous ; they all feed at the expense of other animals; they attach themselves to fishes and frogs; some- times they devour molluscs, worms, or the larvae of insects. Few animal substances are rejected; all kinds of fish, dead or alive, seem acceptable. Entering the larger fresh-water shells, the leech takes up its abode, an uninvited vis^itor, and remains until it has emptied them of their contents. They even devour other leeches. Sir J. Dalyell saw one half swallowed by a horse-leech scarcely double its size, and still struggling for liberty; but its ferocious enemy, adhering firmly by its sucker, and u'adulating its body in the water as if to aid deglutition, occupied three hours in finishing its meal. The use of the medicinal leeches is so general that they have become an important article of commerce, and are procured in great quan- tities from Spain and Eussia. They may be preserved for a long time by placing them in moist earth or mud. On the approach of cold weatlier they bury themselves at the pj^ ? yt bottom of ponds, and pass the winter in lethargy, but they regain their activity in spring. When kept in large reservoirs with clay-banks fringed with rushes and aquatic plants, the leech will propagate its kind. It lays about a dozen eggs, enclosed in a mucous cocoon of an oval form, about a quarter of an inch long. In the month of holes may be observed in tie mud or clay of the banks, each of. i Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Jones, Thomas Rymer, 1810-1880. London : Society for Promoting Knowledge
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectzoology
