he blood continues
to run from the open wound. It is by repeating their attacks night after
night that the strength of an animal becomes exhausted, and it dies from
sheer loss of blood and consequent faintness. With animals this is far
from being a rare occurrence. Hundreds of horses and cattle are killed
every year in the South American pastures. These creatures suffer,
perhaps, without knowing from what cause, for the phyllostoma performs
its cupping operation without causing the least pain--at all events the
sleeper is very rarely awakened by it.

It is easy to understand how it sucks the blood of its victim, for its
snout and the leafy appendage around its mouth--from whence it derives
the name "phyllostoma"--are admirably adapted to that end. But how does
it make the puncture to "let" the blood? That is as yet a mystery among
naturalists, as it also is among the people who are habitually its
victims. Even Guapo could not explain the process. The large teeth--of
which it has got quite a mouthful--seem altogether unfitted to make a
hole such as is found where the "phyllostoma" has been at work. Their
bite, moreover, would awake the soundest sleeper.

Besides these, it has neither fangs, nor stings, nor proboscis, that
would serve the purpose. How then does its reach the blood? Many
theories have been offered; some assert that it rubs the skin with its
snout until its brings it to bleeding: others say that it sets the sharp
point of one of its large tusks against the part, and then by plying its
wings wheels round and round, as upon a pivot, until the point has
penetrated--that during this operation the motion of the wings fans and
cools the sleeping victim, so that no pain is felt. It may be a long
while before this curious question is solved, on account of the
difficulty of observing a creature whose habits are nocturnal, and most
of whose deeds are "done in the dark."

People have denied the existence of such a creature as the blood-sucking
bat--even naturalists have gone so far. They can allege no better
grounds for their incredulity than that the thing has an air of the
fabulous and horrible about it. But this is not philosophy. Incredulity
is the characteristic of the half-educated. It may be carried too far,
and the fables of the vulgar have often a stratum of truth at the
bottom. There is one thing that is almost intolerable, and that is the
conceit of the "closet-naturalist," who sneers at everything as unt