THE VAMPIRE BAT. Ii; 



The Vampire seems to be very capricious in its tastes, for while one person may sleep 

 in the open air with perfect impunity, another will be wounded almost nightly. Mr. 

 Waterton, urged by his usual enthusiastic desire for personal investigation, slept for the 

 space of eleven months in an open loft, where the Vampires came in and out every night. 

 They were seen hovering over the hammock, and passing through the apertures that 

 served for windows, but never made a single attack. Yet an Indian, who slept within 

 a few yards, suffered frequently by the abstraction of blood from his toes. This 

 distinction was not on account of color, for a young lad about twelve years of age, the 

 son of an English gentleman, was bitten on the forehead with such severity, that the 

 wound bled freely on the following morning. The fowls of the same house suffered so 

 terribly, that they died fast ; and an unfortunate jackass was being killed by inches. He 

 looked, to use Mr. Waterton's own language, " like misery steeped in vinegar. " 



Although these bats have so great a predilection for the blood of animals, they are not 

 restricted to so sanguinary a diet, but live chiefly on insects which they capture on the 

 wing. Indeed, they would have but a meagre diet were they to depend wholly on a 



VAMPIRE BAT. Vatapyrus Spectrum. 



supply of human or brute blood, for there are sufficient Vampires in existence to drain 

 the life-blood from man and beast. Many other creatures have the same propensities 

 happy if they can gratify them ; satisfied if they are withheld from so doing. The com- 

 mon leech is a familiar example of a similar mode of life ; for it may be that not one leech 

 out of a thousand ever tastes blood at all, although they are so ravenously eager after it 

 when they have the opportunity for gratifying their sanguinary taste. 



On reference to the figure of the Vampire Bat, it will be seen that the wide 

 and flattened membrane which supports the body in the air, connects together the whole 

 of the limbs and the tail, leaving free only the hinder feet, and the thumbs of the fore- 

 paws. This membrane is wondrously delicate, and is furnished not only with the minute 

 blood-vessels, to which allusion has already been made, but with a system of nerves 

 which possess the most exquisite power of sensation. 



It has been long known that bats are able to thread their way among boughs of trees 

 and other impediments with an ease that almost seems beyond the power of sight, 



