18 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



which I caught. For once, the systematist had 

 labeled them opportunely, and we never called 

 them anything but Furipterus horrens. 



In the evening, great bats as large as small 

 herons swept down the long front gallery where 

 we worked, gleaning as they went; but the vam- 

 pires were long in coming, and for months we 

 neither saw nor heard of one. Then they at- 

 tacked our servants, and we took heart, and night 

 after night exposed our toes, as conventionally 

 accepted vampire-bait. When at last they found 

 that the color of our skins was no criterion of 

 dilution of blood, they came in crowds. For 

 three nights they swept about us with hardly a 

 whisper of wings, and accepted either toe or 

 elbow or finger, or all three, and the cots and 

 floor in the morning looked like an emergency 

 hospital behind an active front. In spite of 

 every attempt at keeping awake, we dropped off 

 to sleep before the bats had begun, and did not 

 waken until they left. We ascertained, how- 

 ever, that there was no truth in the belief that 

 they hovered or kept fanning with their wings. 

 Instead, they settled on the person with an ap- 

 preciable flop and then crawled to the desired 

 spot. 



