15 ATS. 31 



thatched loft of a planter's house. Next morning I heard 

 this gentleman muttering in his hammock, and now and 

 then letting fall an imprecation or two. " What is the 

 matter, sir?" said I softly; " is anything amiss!" "What 

 is the matter !" answered he surlily; " why, the vampires 

 have been sucking me to death." As soon as there was 

 light enough, I went to his hammock, and saw it much 

 stained with blood. " There," said he, thrusting his foot 

 out of the hammock, " see how these imps have been 

 drawing my life's blood." On examining his foot, I 

 found the vampire had tapped his great toe. There 

 was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech. 

 The blood was still oozing from it, and I conjectured he 

 might have lost from ten to twelve ounces of blood.' 



Mr. Waterton further tells us that a boy of ten or 

 eleven years of age was bitten by a vampire ; and a poor 

 ass, belonging to the young gentleman's father, was 

 dying by inches from the bites of the larger kinds, whilo 

 most of his fowls were killed by the smaller bats. 



The torpidity in which bats remain during the winter, 

 in climates similar to that of England, is well known ; 

 and, like other animals which undergo the same sus- 

 pension of powers, they have their histories of long 

 imprisonment in places which seem inimical to life. 

 There are two accounts of their being found in trees 

 which are extremely curious, and the more so, be- 

 cause the one corroborates the other. In the beginning 

 of November 1821, a woodman, engaged in splitting 

 timber for rail-posts in the woods close by the lake 

 at Haining, a seat of Mr. Pringle's, in Selkirkshire, 

 discovered in the centre of a large wild-cherry tree a 

 living bat of a bright scarlet colour, which, as soon as it 

 was relieved from its entombment, took to its wings and 



