238 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



which is only marred by the want of an index, the 

 author says : — 



" Early in January I started on an expedition to 

 the islands of the Bocas. Our object was two- 

 fold : to see tropical coast scenery and to get, if 

 possible, some Guacharo birds (pronounced 

 Huacharo), known also in the West Indies as 

 Diablotin, and to ornithologists more familiarly as 

 the oil bird {Steatornis caripensis). Our chance 

 of getting them depended on the sea being calm 

 outside the Bocas as well as inside (i., p. i8i). The 

 first islands which we made — the Five Islands as 

 they are called — are curious enough. Isolated 

 remnants of limestone, the biggest perhaps loo 

 yards long by lOO feet high, channelled and honey- 

 combed into strange shapes by rain and waves (i., 

 p. 1 82). As it grew dark, dark things came trooping 

 over the sea, by twos and threes, then twenty at a 

 time, all passed us towards a cave near by. Birds 

 we fancied them at first, of the colour and size of 

 starlings ; but they proved to be bats, and bats too 

 which have the reputation of catching fish. So 

 goes the tale, believed by some who see them 

 continually and have a keen eye for nature, and 

 who say that the bat sweeps the fish up off the top 

 of the water with the scoop-like membrane of his 

 hindlegs and tail. For this last fact I will not 

 vouch, but I am assured that fish scales were found 

 after I left the island in the stomachs of these bats, 

 and that of the fact of their picking up small fish 

 there can be no doubt. You could not, says a 

 friend, be out at night in a boat and hear their 



