the otter, that it is frequently
described as one, and has been called the Demerara otter; but it is in
reality a true opossum.

BATS.

No animal's physiognomy can be more hideous, when seen from the front,
than the countenance of the largest South American vampire-bat. Fancy a
creature measuring twenty-eight inches in expanse of wing, its large
leathery ears standing out from the sides and top of the head, and an
erect spur-shaped appendage on the tip of the nose,--the grin, and the
glistening black eye, all combining to make up a figure which reminds
one of some mocking imp of fable. No wonder that imaginative people
have conferred diabolical instincts on so ugly an animal.

Ugly as is the broad leaf-nosed family of bats, it is in reality the
least harmless. The little grey Phyllostoma is the guilty blood-sucker
which visits sleepers and bleeds them in the night. It is of a dark
grey colour, striped with white down the back, and having a leaf-like
fleshy expansion on the tip of the nose. Although they undoubtedly
attack sleeping people, yet they appear to be somewhat partial as to the
individuals they select. Bates, when sleeping in a room up the Amazon,
long unused, was awoke at midnight by a rushing noise made by vast hosts
of bats sweeping round him. The air was alive with them. They had put
out the lamp, and when he relighted it the place appeared black with the
impish multitudes that were whirling round and round. After he had laid
about him well with a stick for a few minutes they disappeared among the
tiles; but when all was quiet again, they returned once more and
extinguished the light. The next night several got into his hammock,
and on waking in the morning he found a wound, evidently caused by one
of them, on his hip. There were altogether four species. One of them
(the Dysopes perotis) has enormously large ears, and measures two feet
from tip to tip of the wings. The natives, however, assured him that it
was the phyllostoma which had inflicted the wound, and they asserted
that it is the only kind which attacks man. But Mr Bates considers
that several kinds of bats have this propensity.

Darwin, when travelling in Chili, noticing that one of the horses was
very restive, went to see what was the matter; and fancying that he
could distinguish something, put his hands on the beast's withers, and
discovered a vampire-bat. In the morning, the place where the wound had
been inflicted was easil