In answer to a query, "whether the vampire of India and that of South
America be of one species," Mr. Waterton replies, "I beg to say that I
consider them distinct species. I have never yet seen a bat from India
with a membrane rising perpendicularly from the end of its nose; nor
have I ever been able to learn that bats in India suck animals, though
I have questioned many people on this subject. I could only find two
species of bats in Guiana, with a membrane rising from the nose. Both
these kinds suck animals and eat fruit; while those bats without a
membrane on the nose seem to live entirely upon fruit and insects, but
chiefly insects. A gentleman, by name Walcott, from Barbadoes, lived
high up the river Demerara. While I was passing a day or two at his
house, the vampires sucked his son a boy of about ten or eleven years
old, some of his fowls and his jack-ass. The youth showed me his
forehead at daybreak: the wound was still bleeding apace, and I examined
it with minute attention. The poor ass was doomed to be a prey to these
sanguinary imps of night: he looked like misery steeped in vinegar.
I saw, by the numerous sores on his body, and by his apparent debility,
that he would soon sink under his afflictions. Mr. Walcott told me that
it was with the greatest difficulty he could keep a few fowls, on
account of the smaller vampire; and that the larger kind were killing
his poor ass by inches. It was the only quadruped he had brought up with
him into the forest.

"Although I was so long in Dutch Guiana and visited the Orinoco and
Cayenne, and ranged through part of the interior of Portuguese Guiana,
still I could never find out how the vampires actually draw the blood;
and, at this day, I am as ignorant of the real process as though I had
never been in th« vampire's country. I should not feel so mortified at
my total failure in attempting the discovery, had. I not made such