308 
TROPICAL NATURE 
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across the expanded wings, with the body of a proportionate 
size ; and when resting in the daytime on dead trees, hanging 
head downwards, the branches look as if covered with some 
monster fruits. The descendants of the Portuguese in the East 
use them for food, but all the native inhabitants reject them. 
In South America there is a group of bats which are sure 
to attract attention. These are the so-called vampires or 
blood-suckers, which abound in most parts of tropical Amer- 
ica, and are especially plentiful in the Amazon valley. Their 
carnivorous propensities were once discredited, but are too 
well authenticated. Horses and cattle are often bitten, and 
are found in the morning covered with blood, and repeated 
attacks weaken and ultimately destroy them. Some persons 
are especially subject to the attacks of these bats; and as 
native huts are never sufficiently close to keep them out, 
these unfortunate individuals are obliged to sleep completely 
muffled up in order to avoid being made seriously ill or even 
losing their lives. The exact manner in which the attack is 
made is not positively known, as the sufferer never feels the 
wound. The present writer was once bitten on the toe, 
which was found bleeding in the morning from a small round 
hole from which the flow of blood was not easily stopped. 
On another occasion, when his feet were carefully covered 
up, he was bitten on the tip of the nose, only awaking to find 
his face streaming with blood. The motion of the wings fans 
the sleeper into a deeper slumber, and renders him insensible 
to the gentle abrasion of the skin either by teeth or tongue. 
This ultimately forms a minute hole, the blood flowing from 
which is sucked or lapped up by the hovering vampire. The 
largest South American bats, having wings from two to two and 
a half feet in expanse, are fruit-eaters like the Pteropi of the 
East, the true blood-suckers being small or of medium size, 
and varying in colour in different localities. They belong to 
the genus Desmodus, and have a tongue with horny papillae 
at the end ; and it is probably by means of this that they 
abrade the skin and produce a small round wound. This is 
the account given by Buffon and Azara, and there seems now 
little doubt that it is correct. 
Beyond these two great types — the monkeys and the bats 
— we look in vain among the varied forms of mammalian life 
