diligent search after the vampire, and examined its haunts. Europeans
may consider as fabulous the stories related of the vampire; but, for
my own part, I must believe in its powers of sucking blood from living
animals, as I have repeatedly seen both men and beasts which had been
sucked, and, moreover, I have examined very minutely their bleeding
wounds.

"Wishful of having it in my power to say that I had been sucked by the
vampire, and not caring for the loss of ten or twelve ounces of blood,
I frequently and designedly put myself in the way of trial. But the
vampire seemed to take a personal dislike to me; and the provoking brute
would refuse to give my clavet one solitary trial, though he would tap
the more favoured Indian's toe, in a hammock within a few yards of
mine. For the space of eleven months, I slept alone in the loft of a
woodcutter's abandoned house in the forest; and though the vampire came
in and out every night, and I had the finest opportunity of seeing him,
as the moon shone through apertures where windows had once been, I never
could be certain that I saw him make a positive attempt to quench his
thirst from my veins, though he often hovered over the hammock."

* * * * *


THE STORK


Is now rarely seen in Britain; one was killed a short time since in
the neighbourhood of Ethie House, and is to be seen in Mr. Mollison's
Museum, Bridge-street, Montrose. The editor of the Montrose Review
believes that a stork had not been killed in Scotland since the year