delectation of the leeches. Fine clay is ground
until as impalpable as flour or tooth-powder;
and is then mixed into a thick batter with
water, so carefully that no little pools or cells
of water shall be left within the mass; indeed
it is kneaded by the naked feet of Turks and
Greeks for a long period, until perfectly
homogeneous. The batter or dough is put
into tubs, like large washing tubs; the leeches
are tumbled in (about three thousand to each
tub), and are carefully mixed or kneaded up,
until the whole assemblage bears a strong
resemblance to a huge currant-cake on its
way to the baker's, the black heads and tails
doing duty as currants. A top is then fastened
upon the tub, with a hole in the centre
covered with a perforated tin plate. And
thus do the leeches travel about, immersed in
their own batter-pudding. We do not say
that all leeches come to England in such
travelling costume; we speak only of the
extra-fattened black personages as they leave
Smyrna.

The fourth oddity is leech-rivalry. Leeches
are not allowed to have matters all their own
way. Their prescribed office is to fasten their
little mouths upon human bodies, make little
holes and perform a pumping pneumatic
operation; but there are rivals in the field.
Leeches are precarious creatures; they die,
they are occasionally obstinate, they are
expensive, they are often scarce, and one
consequence of all this has been, that competition
in trade now affects leeches in the same way
as other industrial practitioners. Not only
are there projects for inducing leeches to
bite, but projects for inducing small pieces of
mechanism to bite like leeches. Some one
has discovered that leeches when drunk will
bite until sober; and, therefore, when they
show a disinclination to bite, he makes them
drunk; he puts them into a little warm
beer, and directly they begin to kick about,
he takes them out, holds them in a cloth,
applies them, and finds that they will bite
immediately and vigorously. This is one of
the very few cases we have met with, of a
personage being more useful when drunk
than when sober. The surgeons at the Hôtel
Dieu, at Paris, are said to be a little more
delicate in their practice: they intoxicate
their sluggish leeches with a little warm
wine and water, instead of beer.

This soft persuasion of a leech, however,
does not belong to the competition of which
we spoke. Such competition is exemplified
in the leech-bite lancet and the mechanical
leech, both of them savage and sanguinary
rivals to the leech in his useful labours. The
leech-bite lancet is intended for use in localities
where leeches are scarce or high-priced,
and in some few cases where it would be
really preferable to a leech. The mechanical
leech is a more pretentious and ambitious
affair, since it competes with the leech and
the cupper at the same time.

The fifth oddity is perhaps the oddest of all
—- leech barometers. Whether we shall ever
live to see the day when English weather
can be safely predicted, the reader is at full
liberty to decide for himself. Certainly
there has been little progress made in this
art hitherto. Leeches perform a portion of
the duties of Zadkiel and Murphy, in
addition to their usual sanguinary services.
Cowper, in the Task, asserts that leeches,
"in point of the earliest intelligence, are
worth all the barometers in the world" —a
bold assertion which the shade of Cowper
is bound to support before the British Association.
A clergyman, residing in France some
years ago, was wont to employ a leech as a
barometer. He found every morning that
the leech occupied a position bearing a certain
relation to the state of the weather; and, by
attentive observation, he was enabled to
arrive at certain rules in respect to this
relation—that when the weather was about
to be serene and pleasant, the leech remained
at the bottom of the vessel without the least
movement; that when rain was about to
fall the leech mounted to the surface of the
water, and there remained until the return
of fine weather; that on the approach of
boisterous weather the leech moved in the
water with unusual swiftness, and never
ceased from this motion until the wind began
to blow; that on the approach of thundery
and rainy weather the leech remained out of
the water for several days, appearing agitated
and restless; that when a frost was about to
commence, the leech remained quiet at the
bottom of the vessel, and that during the
time of snow or rain the leech fixed itself to
the neck of the vessel; remaining at perfect
rest. These rules are sufficiently distinct to
enable any person to test their accuracy who
may be disposed so to do. This theory has,
however, received some awkward blows.
M. Bornare, a French savant, enclosed three
leeches in one vessel on a particular day. He
found that so far from being barometrically
sympathetic, one remained all day out of the
water, steadily affixed to the vessel; another
was swimming about in the water; while
the third remained at the bottom of the
vessel —a very disunited and inharmonious
state of things. Bonuet, the celebrated
Genevese naturalist, was of opinion that,
"whether leeches are barometers or not, they
are very sensitive thermometers; for as
often as he applied his finger to the outside
of a bottle on the spot where a leech was
affixed within, the leech moved as if aflfected
by the rise of temperature. But it is just
possible that timidity (supposing a leech can
be timid) had more to do with the matter
than temperature.

This barometer question has not been left
altogether in the hands of men of past days.
Mr. Attree, formerly house-surgeon to the
Middlesex Hospital, communicated a paper
to the Lancet, three or four years ago, in
which he stoutly maintained the prophetic