these animals, either personally, or even for poultry, because they are incapable of seizing upon the smallest bird, for if they come too near the ground they fall, and are then under the necessity of climbing up some elevated object before they can resume their flight, and in this case they climb up the first thing they meet with, even if it be a man. They trail their bodies along, consequently move very slow, and which is of itself sufficient to prove their incapacity for seizing birds. These animals, when going to take wing, cannot, like birds, dart at once into the air, but are obliged to beat their wings several times to fill them, and to release their claws from what they have hold of, and even then the weight of their bodies frequently bears them to the ground; from this necessity of filling their wings they cannot take flight from any part of the tree, but are obliged to crawl to a part of the branch where they can act with perfect freedom. They are much alarmed at the firing of a gun, or at a peal of thunder; and if a large flock of them, resting upon a tree, are surprised by either of these reports, in their haste to fly, numbers of them fall to the ground, not having sufficient air in their wings; in this case they hasten to climb up the first object they met with; let us therefore only suppose that object to be a traveller unacquainted with these animals; he would naturally be struck with terror at being suddenly surrounded with a number of creatures of such an ugly form and aspect, and especially when they began to climb up his body; he would of course endeavour to extricate himself from them, and they, in turn, finding themselves roughly treated, might begin to scratch and bite. Would not a circumstance of this nature be sufficient to give rise to the idea that these bats were ferocious animals, rushing upon men for the purpose of wounding and destroying them? when the whole would arise from the rencounter of different animals mutually afraid of each other. They are led to reside in forests by instinct, it being there only they can procure subsistence, and not from any savage disposition; besides this, neither of these bats ever light upon carrion, nor do they eat upon the ground, but generally in a hanging posture, and which appears to be necessary when they feed all of which is surely enough to prove they are neither carnivorous, voracious, nor cruel animals; and as their flight is both heavy and noisy, there cannot remain a doubt of their being a species very distant from the vampyre. The great Ternat bats have also been charged with feeding on fish, because they sometimes fly very near the water; but this is equally untrue, for it is certain that they live entirely on vegetables, and it is solely for the purpose of washing themselves that they go so near the water, being an exceedingly clean animal, for of the numbers I have killed I never found dirt upon any of them.