Note: In the mouth of bloodsucking leeches are three
      convergent, serrated jaws, moved by strong muscles. By
      the motion of these jaws a stellate incision is made in
      the skin, through which the leech sucks blood till it
      is gorged, and then drops off. The stomach has large
      pouches on each side to hold the blood. The common
      large bloodsucking leech of America ({Macrobdella
      decora}) is dark olive above, and red below, with black
      spots. Many kinds of leeches are parasitic on fishes;
      others feed upon worms and mollusks, and have no jaws
      for drawing blood. See {Bdelloidea}. {Hirudinea}, and
      {Clepsine}.
3. (Surg.) A glass tube of peculiar construction, adapted for
   drawing blood from a scarified part by means of a vacuum.
{Horse leech}, a less powerful European leech ({H[ae]mopis
   vorax}), commonly attacking the membrane that lines the
   inside of the mouth and nostrils of animals that drink at
   pools where it lives.

\Spe"cies\, n. sing. & pl. [L., a sight, outward
appearance, shape, form, a particular sort, kind, or quality,
a species. See {Spice}, n., and cf. {Specie}, {Special}.]
1. Visible or sensible presentation; appearance; a sensible
   percept received by the imagination; an image. [R.] ``The
   species of the letters illuminated with indigo and
   violet.'' --Sir I. Newton.
         Wit, . . . the faculty of imagination in the writer,
         which searches over all the memory for the species
         or ideas of those things which it designs to
         represent.                            --Dryden.
Note: In the scholastic philosophy, the species was sensible
      and intelligible. The sensible species was that in any
      material, object which was in fact discerned by the
      mind through the organ of perception, or that in any
      object which rendered it possible that it should be
      perceived. The sensible species, as apprehended by the
      understanding in any of the relations of thought, was
      called an intelligible species. ``An apparent diversity
      between the species visible and audible is, that the
      visible doth not mingle in the medium, but the audible
      doth.'' --Bacon.
2. (Logic) A group of individuals agreeing in common
   attributes, and designated by a common name; a conception
   subordinated to another conception, called a genus, or
   generic conception, from which it differs in containing or
   comprehending more attributes, and extending to fewer
   individuals. Thus, {man} is a species, under {animal} as a
   genus; and man, in its turn, may be regarded as a genus
   with respect to {European}, {American}, or the like, as
   species.
3. In science, a more or less permanent group of existing
   things or beings, associated according to attributes, or
   properties determined by scientific observation.
Note: In mineralogy and chemistry, objects which possess the
      same definite chemical structure, and are fundamentally
      the same in crystallization and physical characters,
      are classed as belonging to a species. In zo["o]logy
      and botany, a species is an ideal group of individuals
      which are believed to have descended from common
      ancestors, which agree in essential characteristics,
      and are capable of indefinitely continued fertile
      reproduction through the sexes. A species, as thus
      defined, differs from a variety or subspecies only in
      the greater stability of its characters and in the
      absence of individuals intermediate between the related
      groups.
4. A sort; a kind; a variety; as, a species of low cunning; a
   species of generosity; a species of cloth.
5. Coin, or coined silver, gold, ot other metal, used as a
   circulating medium; specie. [Obs.]
         There was, in the splendor of the Roman empire, a
         less quantity of current species in Europe than
         there is now.                         --Arbuthnot.
6. A public spectacle or exhibition. [Obs.] --Bacon.
7. (Pharmacy)
   (a) A component part of compound medicine; a simple.
   (b) (Med.) An officinal mixture or compound powder of any
       kind; esp., one used for making an aromatic tea or
       tisane; a tea mixture. --Quincy.
8. (Civil Law) The form or shape given to materials; fashion
   or shape; form; figure. --Burill.
{Incipient species} (Zo["o]l.), a subspecies, or variety,
   which is in process of becoming permanent, and thus
   changing to a true species, usually by isolation in
   localities from which other varieties are excluded.