510 TROPICAL BATS 



naturally, for on examining several of them, they appeared quite 

 fresh and blooming ; and so Waterton concluded the vampires 

 pulled them from the tree, either to get at the young fruit 

 or to catch the insects which often take up their abode in 

 flowers. 



The Vampire (Phyllostonia spectrum), in general, measures 

 about twenty-six inches from wing to wing extended, so th^^t 

 his dimensions are not equal to those of the oriental kalong. 

 Like the flying foxes, he may sometimes be seen in the forest 

 hanging in clusters, head downwards, from the branch of a 

 tree, a circumstance of which Groldsmith seems to have been 

 aware, for in the "Deserted Village," speaking of America, 

 he says — 



" And matted woods, where birds forget to sing, 

 But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling." 



Some of the phyllostomidse have a tongue once as long again 

 as the head, and armed at the extremity with recurved bristles, 

 like that of the wood-pecker, no doubt a very sersaceable instru- 

 ment for extracting insects from the narrow hollows and crevices 

 of trees and rocks. 



The Ehinolophi or Horse-shoe Bats of the old continent, 



have also a more or less 

 complicated nasal ap- 

 pendage, or foliaceous 

 membrane at the end 

 of the nose, but differ- 

 ing in its conformation, 

 from that of the phyllo- 

 stomidse. They are in- 

 sectivorous, like most of 

 their order, and none 

 Rhmoiophus. of them seem to in- 



dulge in the blood- 

 sucking propensities of the large American vampires. They 

 chiefly inhabit the tropical regions of Africa and Asia, and more 

 particularly the Indian archipelago, but the Rldnolophus 

 nnihastatus ranges in Europe as far as England. 



Numerous genera and species of tropical bats, distinguished 



I 



