Slow Signal Fade ebooks

The next
morning I found a wound, evidently caused by a bat, on my hip.
This was rather unpleasant, so I set to work with the negroes,
and tried to exterminate them. I shot a great many as they hung
from the rafters, and the negroes having mounted with ladders to
the roof outside, routed out from beneath the caves many hundreds
of them, including young broods. There were altogether four
species--two belonging to the genus Dysopes, one to Phyllostoma,
and the fourth to Glossophaga. By far the greater number belonged
to the Dysopes perotis, a species having very large ears, and
measuring two feet from tip to tip of the wings. The Phyllostoma
was a small kind, of a dark-grey colour, streaked with white down
the back, and having a leaf-shaped fleshy expansion on the tip of
the nose. I was never attacked by bats except on this occasion.
The fact of their sucking the blood of persons sleeping, from
wounds which they make in the toes, is now well established; but
it is only a few persons who are subject to this blood-letting.


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