348 THE YOUTH’S CABINET.

Fee
When their eyes were covered, as well as | Jackson, in New Holland; and some that
when quite destroyed, they would fly | were caught alive ate out of the hands of
about in a room, carefully avoiding the | those who caught them, and in a few days
sides, or anything projecting in a narrow became as completely tame, as if they
passage. They would invariably turn | had been brought up in the house. One
where the passage turned at right angles, | of these bats, belonging to Governor Phil-
and always keep in the middle. They | ip, would hang by one leg a whole day,
never failed to avoid these objects, even without changing its position.

passing carefully between two of them, | The spectre bat does nob differ much in
when placed so near together, as to ren- | its habits from the vampyre. It is found
der it necessary to contract their wings as in South America, and in some of the
they passed. ‘slands of the Pacific Ocean. Various

The name of vampyre is given to a travelers speak of its eagerness to suck
large species of bat distinguished by its human blood. Captain Stedman relates,
habit of sucking the blood of living ani- | that sleeping in the open air at Surinam,
mals during their sleep; yet this habit is | he was awakened about four o’clock in the
common, also, to most of the bats of Java, | morning, and exceedingly alarmed to find
‘and other hot climates. It is said to be himself covered with blood, but feeling
exceedingly dangerous to sleep in the open | 20 pain. Rising up hastily, he ran to the
air, in the island of Java, with the head | surgeon, as he was all over besmeared
and feet uncovered, or in the house, with with blood. It was soon discovered that
the window open. Some of the species he had been attacked by a bat, which
are so skilful in their operation of opening | Was judged by the surgeon to have taken
a vein, and thrusting their tongue into from him about fourteen ounces of blood.
the wound, that people have been known When these animals discover a person
to pass insensibly from the state of sleep | 2 sound sleep, they cautiously ap-
to that of death. Besides blood, these proach, gently fanning wi th their extend-
animals also subsist on the juices of some ed wings, by which means a soothing in-
kinds of fruit; and they are so fond of | fluence is thrown over the sleeper, which
the juice of the palm-tree, that they have renders his sleep the sounder, while the
been known to drink it till they fall down bat cautiously goes on with his bleeding
insensible. : operation.

Finch, the traveler, informs us, that
“they hang to the boughs of trees near
Surat, in the East Indies, in such vast
clusters, as would surprise a man to see;
and the squalling they make is so intoler-
able that it were a good deed to bring
two or three pieces of cannon, and scour
the trees, that the country might be rid
of such a plague as they are to it.”

More than twenty thousand bats were
observed, in the space of a mile, at Port

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
  

 

Never be Idle.

wan who is able to employ him-

self innocently is never miserable.

It is the idle who are wretched.

If I wanted to inflict the greatest

punishment on a fellow-creature, I would

shut him alone in a dark room, without
employment.