Flying Foxes. 



CHAPTER XLV. 



TROPICAL BATS. 



Wonderful Orgiuusatlon of the Bats — The Fox-Bat — The Vampire — Its Blood- 

 Sucking Propensities — The Vampire and the Scotchman — The Horse-Shoe 

 Bats — The Nycteribia — The Flying Squirrel — The Galeopithecus — The Ano- 

 malurus. 



WHEN the sun has disappeared below the horizon, and night 

 falls on the landscape, which a little while ago was 

 bathed in light, then from hollow trees, and creviced rocks, and 

 ruined buildings, a strange and dismal race comes forth. 



Silently hovering through the glades of the woods, or skim- 

 ming along the surface of the streams, it catches the crepuscular 

 or nocturnal moths, and serves like the swallow by day to check 

 the exuberant multiplication of the insect tribes. But while 



