BRITISH GUIANA (11) 327 
has arisen over this relationship of species, some of which subsist 
on fruit, some on insects, and others on blood. The confusion is 
enhanced by the fact that one or two take blood only occasion- 
ally, and that the largest vampire—a diabolically ugly species with 
a wing-span of over two feet and with the scientific name of 
vampirus—is not a blood-sucker at all. 
The common true vampire bat of British Guiana is leaf-nosed 
and only three inches in size. It is distinguished from other small 
bats by the sharp chisel-like cutting edges of its incisors and 
premolars, which enable it to make a clean puncture in the skins 
of animals with little or no disturbance, and like most blood- 
sucking creatures it alights on its host softly and silently so that its 
presence is usually not felt. Although it occasionally preys on man, 
always attacking the extremities, such as the nose and toes when 
these parts are exposed, it feeds principally on the blood of the 
larger wild mammals and domesticated cattle. 
Many of the small fruit-eating vampires appear to the layman to 
be hardly distinguishable from the purely insect-eating bats, but it 
was interesting that I caught dozens of the former in my nets. 
Although quite unlike the fruit bats and flying foxes of the Old 
World in flight or appearance, they nevertheless resemble them 
in not being able to detect such objects as nets set in their paths, 
which leads one to believe that radar detection in bats has been 
evolved primarily for the purpose of detecting insects in flight. 
At Tumatumari much of my time was taken up with capturing 
tanagers, manakins and humming-birds, though the heavy rains 
made this extremely difficult. 
On my return to Georgetown a lot more mammals and birds 
came in, including quite a large collection from Trinidad. The 
Government of British Guiana kindly presented me with a collec- 
tion of Grant’s Guans and Crested Curassows, while the Director 
of the Georgetown Museum gave a large collection of seed-eating 
birds, including Lined and Black-headed Lined Finches, and 
Thick-billed Seed-finches. 
Although the collection, when I left, did not include all the 
creatures I had hoped to get, there were a number of surprise 
items, and in all as much as I could possibly manage. There were 
