220 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



like a magnet to the fierce little face. Once I 

 tried the experiment of a bit of blunted bent wire 

 on a long piece of thread, and at the very first 

 cast I entangled a flutter-mouse and pulled him 

 in. I was aghast when I saw what I had cap- 

 tured. A body hardly as large as that of a mouse 

 was topped with the head of a fiend incarnate. 

 Between his red puffed lips his teeth showed 

 needle-sharp and ivory-white; his eyes were as 

 evil as a caricature from Simplicissimus J and set 

 deep in his head, while his ears and nose were 

 monstrous with fold upon fold of skinny flaps. 

 It was not a living face, but a mask of frightful 

 mobility. 



I set him free, deeming anything so ugly well 

 worthy of life, if such could find sustenance 

 among his fellows and win a mate for himself 

 somewhere in this world. But he, for all his 

 hideousness and unseemly mien, is not the vam- 

 pire; the blood-sucking bat has won a mantle of 

 deceit from the hands of Nature a garb that 

 gives him a modest and not unpleasing appear- 

 ance, and makes it a difficult matter to distin- 

 guish him from his guileless confreres of our 

 summer evenings. 



But in the tropics, the native land of the 



