Ugly as is the broad leaf-nosed family of bats, it is in reality the least harmless. The little grey Phyllostoma is the guilty blood-sucker which visits sleepers and bleeds them in the night. It is of a dark grey colour, striped with white down the back, and having a leaf-like fleshy expansion on the tip of the nose. Although they undoubtedly attack sleeping people, yet they appear to be somewhat partial as to the individuals they select. Bates, when sleeping in a room up the Amazon, long unused, was awoke at midnight by a rushing noise made by vast hosts of bats sweeping round him. The air was alive with them. They had put out the lamp, and when he relighted it the place appeared black with the impish multitudes that were whirling round and round. After he had laid about him well with a stick for a few minutes they disappeared among the tiles; but when all was quiet again, they returned once more and extinguished the light. The next night several got into his hammock, and on waking in the morning he found a wound, evidently caused by one of them, on his hip. There were altogether four species. One of them (the Dysopes perotis) has enormously large ears, and measures two feet from tip to tip of the wings. The natives, however, assured him that it was the phyllostoma which had inflicted the wound, and they asserted that it is the only kind which attacks man. But Mr Bates considers that several kinds of bats have this propensity. Darwin, when travelling in Chili, noticing that one of the horses was very restive, went to see what was the matter; and fancying that he could distinguish something, put his hands on the beast's withers, and discovered a vampire-bat. In the morning, the place where the wound had been inflicted was easily distinguished by being slightly swollen and bloody. Waterton describes the mode in which the vampire-bat makes the orifice through which to suck its victim's blood. It does so by pressing gently the point of its sharp projecting teeth, noiselessly circling round, and making them act the part of a centre-bit,--performing the operation so quietly that no pain is felt. He says, however, that at times they commit a good deal of mischief. A young Indian boy suffered greatly by being frequently attacked; and the son of an English gentleman was bitten so severely on the forehead, that the wound bled freely on the following morning. The fowls also suffered so terribly that they died fast; and an unfortunate jackass on whom they had set their fancy was almost killed by inches.