700 



THE UNIVERSE. 



exhausted, scarcely able to stand upright, and finds one of 

 his feet in a pool of blood. This is the work of the vam- 

 pires, as they are called, which have assailed him during 

 the night with so much skill and precaution that he has 

 not been even awakened by their punctures.^ 



After the sufferings occasioned by the heat, the dangers 



It 



\ 





316. The American Vampire— Fa?)i;3ir«s spectrum (Linnasus). 



of inundation ensue. Some steppes in America are then 

 totally submerged by the overflowing of the rivers, and 

 only look like a vast sea which threatens the animals with 



1 It is really from their habit of sucking the blood of animals that naturalists 

 have given them the name of vampire. La Condamine asserts that thej' exhausted 

 and destroyed the earliest troops of cattle and sheep which were imported into 

 some regions of America. Man himself is not safe from the attacks of these bats. 

 The traveller Azara was several times bitten when sleeping without shelter. 

 Tlie wound is like that of a leech, and is not perceived till waking, when the feeble- 

 ness which results is felt and the blood is seen all round. 



