Mr. Waterton, whom all the world recognizes as a gentleman, and consequently a man of truth, laboured at one time under the same stigma of exaggeration as Captain Stedman, and many other illustrious travellers; and he confirms the blood-sucking in the following terms:--"Some years ago, I went to the river Paumarau, with a Scotch gentleman. We hung our hammocks in the thatched loft of a planter's house. Next morning I heard this gentleman muttering in his hammock, and now and then letting fall an imprecation or two, 'What is the matter, Sir,' said I softly, 'is anything amiss?' 'What is the matter!' answered he surlily, 'why the vampires have been sucking me to death.' As soon as there was light enough, I went to his hammock, and saw it much stained with blood. 'There,' said he, thrusting his foot out of the hammock, 'see how these imps have been drawing my life's blood.' On examining his foot, I found the vampire had tapped his great toe. There was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech. The blood was still oozing from it, and I conjectured he might have lost from ten to twelve ounces of blood." Mr. Waterton further tells us, that a boy of ten or eleven years of age was bitten by a vampire, and a poor ass, belonging to the young gentleman's father, was dying by inches from the bites of the larger kinds, while most of his fowls were killed by the smaller bats. The torpidity in which bats remain during the winter, in climates similar to that of England, is well known; and, like other animals which undergo the same suspension of powers, they have their histories of long imprisonment in places which seem inimical to life. There are two accounts of their being found in trees, which are extremely curious, and the more so, because the one corroborates the other. In the beginning of November, 1821, a woodman, engaged in splitting timber for rail-posts, in the woods close by the lake at Haining, a seat of Mr. Pringle's, in Selkirkshire, discovered, in the centre of a large wild-cherry tree, a living bat, of a bright scarlet colour, which, as soon as it was relieved from its entombment, took to its wings and escaped. In the tree there was a recess sufficiently large to contain the animal; but all around, the wood was perfectly sound, solid, and free from any fissure through which the atmospheric air could reach the animal. A man engaged in splitting timber, near Kelsall, in the beginning of December, 1826, discovered, in the centre of a large pear-tree, a living bat, of a bright scarlet colour, which he foolishly suffered to escape, from fear, being fully persuaded (with the characteristic superstition of the inhabitants of that part of Cheshire), that it was "a being not of this world." The tree presented a small cavity in the centre, where the bat was enclosed, but was perfectly sound and solid on each side. The scarlet colour of each of these prisoners seems at present to be inexplicable, and makes these statements still more marvellous.