18 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
which I caught. For once, the systematist had 
labeled them opportunely, and we never called 
them anything but Furipterus horrens. 
In the evening, great bats as large as small 
herons swept down the long front gallery where 
we worked, gleaning as they went; but the vam- 
pires were long in coming, and for months we 
neither saw nor heard of one. ‘Then they at- 
tacked our servants, and we took heart, and night 
after night exposed our toes, as conventionally 
accepted vampire-bait. When at last they found 
that the color of our skins was no criterion of 
dilution of blood, they came in crowds. For 
three nights they swept about us with hardly a 
whisper of wings, and accepted either toe or 
elbow or finger, or all three, and the cots and 
floor in the morning looked like an emergency 
hospital behind an active front. In spite of 
every attempt at keeping awake, we dropped off 
to sleep before the bats had begun, and did not 
waken until they left. We ascertained, how- 
ever, that there was no truth in the belief that 
they hovered or kept fanning with their wings. 
Instead, they settled on the person with an ap- 
preciable flop and then crawled to the desired 
spot. 
