124 



ZOOLOGICAL SKETCHES. 



panion in Central America often horrified us by mani- 

 festations of the same faculty. " Ben attention ! — ye sens 

 un chorussi" (corrupted from chauve-souris\ he would 

 bawl out in the middle of the night, and the flash of a 

 nitre-match rarely failed to justify the warning by the 

 testimony of our eyes. 



There are four or five species of vampires in the 

 American tropics. Azara holds that none of the in- 

 digenous animals are plagued by these pests, nor by 

 mosquitoes either. But thereby hangs an enigma : 

 granting that the fur of a bear and the feather mantle 

 of a bird are impervious to the sting of a tipulary in- 

 sect, what do they all live on, the countless gnats that 

 never get a chance to commit phlebotomy? In the 

 " Sunken Lands" between Memphis and Little Rock 

 it would be a moderate estimate to say that there must 

 be a million mosquitoes to the square mile. What do 

 they all do for a living? Do they live on hope and 

 one bite a year, or are they vegetarians whose appetite, 

 like ours, is subject to sanguinary aberrations? So 

 much is certain, that the vampire has all the phys- 

 iological characteristics of an insectivorous bat, and if 

 his blood-thirst should be nothing but an abnormal 

 caprice he forfeits the least claim to mercy, since the 

 act which seems noway essential to the preservation 

 of his own life often endangers that of his victim : the 

 wounds of bitten cattle sometimes bleed for days, and 

 are apt to produce dangerous inflammations. The 



