If you ever pass through La Brienne, in France, you will see a man
pale, and straight-haired, with a woollen cap on his head, and his legs
and arms naked. He walks along the borders of a marsh, among the spots
left dry by the surrounding waters, but particularly wherever the
vegetation seems to present the subjacent soil undisturbed. This man is
a leech-fisher. To see him at a distance,--his hollow aspect, livid
lips, and singular gestures,--you would take him for a patient who had
left his sick bed in a fit of delirium. If you observe him every now
and then raising his legs, and examining them one after another, you
might suppose him a fool; but he is an intelligent leech-fisher. The
leeches attach themselves to his legs and feet, and as he moves along
their haunts, he feels them bite, and gathers them as they cluster
round the roots of the bulrushes and sea-weeds.