The Leeches of Minnesot

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Part III CLASSIFICATION OF THE LEECHES OF MINNESOTA J. Percy Moore INTRODUCTION That the lake region of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Manitoba abounds in leeches of large size and great variety has long been known, and has been commented upon frequently by visitors to that well-watered area. The very first...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Part III CLASSIFICATION OF THE LEECHES OF MINNESOTA J. Percy Moore INTRODUCTION That the lake region of Wisconsin, Minnesota and Manitoba abounds in leeches of large size and great variety has long been known, and has been commented upon frequently by visitors to that well-watered area. The very first recognizable descriptions of North American leeches, published by Thomas Say in 1824, were based upon examples observed in the territory about Lake Vermil- lion in Minnesota. Since that time a number of additional species have been described from localities about the western end of Lake Superior. The richness of the leech fauna of Minnesota is fully established by the splendid collections, gathered by the State Zoological Survey under the direction of Professor Henry F. Nachtrieb, which form the chief basis of this report. The entire State is not represented in the collection, most of which came from the northern section, chiefly from Lake Vermillion, Leech Lake, Mille Lacs and their environs. Yet it includes twenty species?a number probably greater than could be found in an area of equal size elsewhere in the United States, or, so far as has been recorded, anywhere else in fresh water. Leeches generally have a wide geographical distribution and the presence of most of these species in other parts of the state is to be expected, as many of them range through the entire northern tier of .states or even beyond, several are circumpolar, and one, Glossiphonia stagnalis, is almost cosmopolitan. The occurrence of a considerable num'ber of the species in the southern portion of Minnesota has been ascertained through material received from other sources, the most important being a collection sent to me by Prof. Henry L. Osborn, which, indeed, adds one species, Placobdella ...