The blood-sucking Ticks are also to be classed among the intolerable nuisances of many tropical regions. A large American species called Garapata (_Ixodes sanguisuga_) fixes on the legs of travellers, and gradually buries its whole head in the skin, which the body, disgustingly distended with blood, is unable to follow. On being violently removed, the former remains in the wound, and often produces painful sores. The Indians returning in the evening from the forest or from their field labour generally bring some of these creatures along with them, swollen to the size of hazel nuts. Though countless hosts of ticks infest the Ceylonese jungle, though mosquitoes without number swarm over the lower country, yet the land-leeches which beset the traveller in the rising grounds are a still more detested plague. ‘They are not frequent in the plains,’ says Sir E. Tennent, ‘which are too hot and dry for them; but amongst the rank vegetation in the lower ranges of the hill-country, which is kept damp by frequent showers, they are found in tormenting profusion. They are terrestrial, never visiting ponds or streams. In size they are about an inch in length, and as fine as a common knitting needle, but capable of distention till they equal a quill in thickness and attain a length of nearly two inches. Their structure is so flexible that they can insinuate themselves through the meshes of the finest stocking, not only seizing on the feet and ankles, but ascending to the back and throat, and fastening on the tenderest parts of the body. The coffee planters who live amongst these pests are obliged in order to exclude them, to envelope their legs in “leech gaiters,” made of closely woven cloth.