GEOLOGY. 090 



Yv^hen this consuming drought has wasted or burned up 

 the steppe, the torrid heat kills numbers of wild animals 

 which can find no place to slake their thirst, and their 

 corpses strew the ground in thousands. Night brings no 

 relief to such sufferings. Frightful bats attack the ex- 

 hausted animals, and like the vampires of the old German 



.f » ' 



315. Travellers attacked by Vampires. 



legends suck their blood, only that they assail living flesh 

 and blood instead of betaking themselves to the corjjses 

 in the graveyards. Man himself is not safe from their 

 voracity. When some traveller overtaken by niglit falls 

 asleep in the open air, he wakes in the morning greatly 



During tlieir sleep monstrous bats fasten like vampires on their backs, suck their 

 blood, and occasion purulent sores, in which horse-flies, mosquitoes, and a host of 

 other stinging insects establish themselves. Such is the painful life of these ani- 

 mals so soon as even the heat of the sun has made the water disappear from the 

 face of the earth." — Humboldt, Tableaux de la Nature, b. i. s. 39. 



