must be arrived at in the case of all but two species, which constitute a little group distinguished by what is apparently a special organization adapting them to this peculiar diet.  These wretched little beasts, which only measure two and a half or three inches in length, are furnished in the upper jaw with a single pair of incisor or front teeth, but these are of great size and strength, triangular in form, and so excessively sharp that when the creatures are seized they can draw blood from the hand of their captor by what seems a mere touch.  This extreme sharpness of their weapons enables them, when attacking sleeping men or animals, to slice off a small portion of skin almost without causing any pain, and the little oval wounds thus produced, like the similar surface-cuts which a careless shaver sometimes inflicts upon his chin, bleed with particular freedom.  The Desmodonts, as these true Vampires are called, will attack horses, mules, and cattle, which they generally wound on the back, near the spine, often in the region of the withers; and they also bite the combs of domestic fowls, and any part of the human body that they can get at.  In the case of man, however, according to most authorities, the extremity of the great toe is the favorite part; and some writers, perhaps possessed of a strong poetical vein, have given wonderful descriptions of the artfulness with which these little blood-suckers make their approaches, and keep their victim comfortably asleep during the operation by fanning him with their wings.  In fact, the Vampire Bats had so bad a reputation from the accounts given by travellers, that they seemed to be veritable scourges of the countries in which they live, but so far as can be made out from the most trustworthy reports, the mischief they cause may be summed up under two heads, namely, weakness produced by loss of blood, which continues to flow from the wounds long after the Bats have drunk their fill and gone quietly home to rest, and inflammatory affections, caused either by the irritation of the bite in the case of people of a bad habit of body, or by the friction of the saddle or collar upon the part bitten in the case of horses and mules, or of the shoe in the human patient.  That the Desmodonts do really feed on blood is proved by evidence of various kinds.  They have been captured in the act of blood-sucking, when their stomachs, which are peculiarly constructed and very long, are found filled with a black paste, which is evidently half-digested blood; and their teeth, which are in part so well adapted for producing the necessary wounds in other animals, are totally unfit for the mastication of an insect prey, such as constitutes the diet of their nearest allies.

[Illustration:  THE VAMPIRE BAT.]