ear, but always in those places where the blood flows
spontaneously. Having applied tobacco-ashes as the best remedy, and
washed the gore from myself and my hammock, I observed several small
heaps of congealed blood all around the place where I had lain, upon
the ground; upon examining which, the surgeon judged that I had lost at
least twelve or fourteen ounces during the night. Having measured this
creature (one of the bats), I found it to be, between the tips of the
wings, thirty-two inches and a half; the colour was a dark brown, nearly
black, but lighter underneath."

Mr. Waterton, whom all the world recognizes as a gentleman, and
consequently a man of truth, laboured at one time under the same stigma
of exaggeration as Captain Stedman, and many other illustrious
travellers; and he confirms the blood-sucking in the following
terms:--"Some years ago, I went to the river Paumarau, with a Scotch
gentleman. We hung our hammocks in the thatched loft of a planter's
house. Next morning I heard this gentleman muttering in his hammock, and
now and then letting fall an imprecation or two, 'What is the matter,
Sir,' said I softly, 'is anything amiss?' 'What is the matter!' answered
he surlily, 'why the vampires have been sucking me to death.' As soon as
there was light enough, I went to his hammock, and saw it much stained
with blood. 'There,' said he, thrusting his foot out of the hammock,
'see how these imps have been drawing my life's blood.' On examining his
foot, I found the vampire had tapped his great toe. There was a wound
somewhat less than that made by a leech. The blood was still oozing from
it, and I conjectured he might have lost from ten to twelve ounces of
blood."

Mr. Waterton further tells us, that a boy of ten or eleven years of age
was bitten by a vampire, and a poor ass, belonging to the young
gentleman's father, was dying by inches from the bites of the larger
kinds, while most of his fowls were killed by the smaller bats.

The torpidity in which bats remain during the winter, in climates
similar to that of England, is well known; and, like other animals which
undergo the same suspension of powers, they have their histories of long
imprisonment in places which seem inimical to life. There are two
accounts of their being found in trees, which are extremely curious, and
the more so, because the one corroborates the other. In the beginning of
November, 1821, a woodman, engaged in splitting timber for rail-