42 Annals of the Carnegie Museum. 



fishing village lying between our camp and Pueblo Viejo, having been 

 brought originally from the mouth of the Aracataca River. We were 

 fortunate in securing several large deer, which gave us plenty of fresh 

 meat, but life was a constant torture at all hours of the day and night, 

 due to the hordes of mosquitoes and sand-flies, which not even a solid 

 muslin canopy would keep out. Suffice it to say that all possible haste 

 was made to get away from such an undesirable locality, and after 

 five days of constant torture we again embarked and fled out into the 

 Cienaga in the evening, hoping thus to get one night of peaceful sleep. 

 But we had not reckoned with the vampire bats. Indeed, we did sleep, 

 and so soundly that it was not until morning that we discovered that 

 an attack had been made on us during the night, the whole party look- 

 ing as if they had been in a trench-raid in the war zone, covered with 

 blood-stains from head to foot from the innumerable bites of the loath- 

 some vampires. It may seem unreasonable to think that we could be 

 bitten in such a fashion and not be awakened, but the fact is, that 

 when the vampire bites there is absolutely no pain produced at the 

 time, the soreness developing later.^" 



However, we managed to get some one hundred and fifteen speci- 

 mens during our stay at Punto Caiman, several of which were addi- 

 tions to the list, among them the hummingbird subsequently described 

 by Dr. Stone as Lepidopyga lillicE. After a hurried bath and break- 

 fast we set sail for Trojas de Cataca, a little fishing village at the 

 mouth of the Rio Aracataca. The houses are all built on piles over 

 about four or five feet of water, and we secured quarters in a compara- 

 tively new one. The odor of drying fish was very disagreeable at 

 first, but after a couple of days we did not mind it very much. It 

 was a pretty sight to see the little fleet of fishing canoes sail away at 

 dawn every morning in search of the great schools of " Lisa.'' When 



10 I had ample proof of this while collecting them around Puerto Cabello, 

 Venezuela. I caught them in an old tunnel formerly used for an aqueduct, 

 using an insect-net for the purpose. After getting them into the net, I would 

 carefully catch them by the nape of the neck and shove them into a cyanide 

 bottle. They are very strong for their size, and the skin of their neck being 

 loose, it so happened that in several cases the animal contrived to wriggle 

 around and bite ray thumb and finger before I could get it into the bottle. 

 When thus bitten I was never aware of the fact until I saw the stream of 

 blood coming from the wound. This wound is made by the four incisor teeth, 

 which work like scissor blades and have the edge of a razor.: — M. A. C, Jr. 



