ted one colony
which spent its inverted days clustered over the center of our supply
chamber, but others came immediately and disputed the ownership of the
dark room. Little chaps with great ears and nose-tissue of sensitive
skin, spent the night beneath my shelves and chairs, and even my cot.
They hunted at dusk and again at dawn, slept in my room and vanished
in the day. Even for bats they were ferocious, and whenever I caught
one in a butterfly-net, he went into paroxysms of rage, squealing in
angry passion, striving to bite my hand and, failing that, chewing
vainly on his own long fingers and arms. Their teeth were wonderfully
intricate and seemed adapted for some very special diet, although
beetles seemed to satisfy those which I caught. For once, the
systematist had labeled them opportunely, and we never called them
anything but _Furipterus horrens_.

In the evening, great bats as large as small herons swept down the
long front gallery where we worked, gleaning as they went; but the
vampires were long in coming, and for months we neither saw nor heard
of one. Then they attacked our servants, and we took heart, and night
after night exposed our toes, as conventionally accepted vampire-bait.
When at last they found that the color of our skins was no criterion
of dilution of blood, they came in crowds. For three nights they swept
about us with hardly a whisper of wings, and accepted either toe or
elbow or finger, or all three, and the cots and floor in the morning
looked like an emergency hospital behind an active front. In spite of
every attempt at keeping awake, we dropped off to sleep before the
bats had begun, and did not waken until they left. We ascertained,
however, that there was no truth in the belief that they hovered or
kept fanning with their wings. Instead, they settled on the person
with an appreciable flop and then crawled to the desired spot.

One night I made a special effort and, with bared arm, prepared for a
long vigil. In a few minutes bats began to fan my face, the wings
almost brushing, but never quite touching my skin. I could distinguish
the difference between the smaller and the larger, the latter having a
deeper swish, deeper and longer drawn-out. Their voices were so high
and shrill that the singing of the jungle crickets seemed almost
contralto in comparison. Finally, I began to feel myself the focus of
one or more of these winged weasels. The swishes became more frequent,
the returning