Both the roussette and rougette are in the cabinet of the King of France; and it is to the island of Bourbon that we are indebted for them. They belong exclusively to the Old Continent; and in no part either of Africa or Asia are they so numerous as the vampyre is in America. These animals are larger, stronger, and perhaps more mischievous than the vampyre. But it is by open force, and in the day as well as night, that they commit hostilities. Fowls and small birds are the objects of their destructive fury; they even attack men, and wound their faces; but no traveller has accused them of sucking the blood of men and animals while asleep.
The ancients had but an imperfect knowledge of these winged quadrupeds, which may, indeed, be termed monsters; and it is probable, that from those whimsical models of Nature, they received the idea of harpies. The wings, the teeth, the claws, the cruelty, the voracity; the nastiness, and all the destructive qualities, and noxious faculties of the harpies, bear no small resemblance to those of the Ternat bat. Herodotus seems to have denoted them, when he mentions that there were large bats which greatly incommoded the men employed in collecting cassia round the marshes of Asia, and that, to shield themselves from the dangerous bites of these animals, they were obliged to cover the body and face with leather. Strabo speaks of very large bats in Mesopotamia, whose flesh was palatable. Among the moderns, these large bats have been mentioned, though in vague terms, by Albertus, Isidorus, and Scaliger. With more precision have they been treated of by Linscot, Nicholas Matthias, and Francis Pyrard; Oliger Jacobeus has given a short description of them with a figure; and lastly, in Seba, and in Edwards, we find well-executed description and figures, which correspond with our own.
The Ternat bats are carnivorous animals, voracious, and possessed of an appetite for every thing that offers. In a dearth of flesh or fish, they feed on vegetables and fruits of every kind. They are fond of the juice of the palm-tree, and it is easy to take them by placing near their retreats vessels filled with palm-tree water, or any other fermented liquor, with which they are sure to intoxicate themselves. They fasten themselves to trees, and hang from them by their claws. They usually fly in flocks, and more by night than by day. Places which are much frequented they shun, and their favourite residence is uninhabited islands. To copulation they are strongly inclined. In the male the sex is very apparent, and not concealed in a scabbard, like that of quadrupeds, but extends forwards from the body, nearly as it does in the ape. In the female the sex is equally conspicuous; she has but two nipples, and those situated upon the breast; she produces more than once a year, but the number at each time is but small. Their flesh, when young, is not unpalatable; the Indians[Z] are fond of it, and compare its flavour to that of the partridge or the rabbit.
[Z] The Moors and Malayans are most certainly meant, as the Indians neither eat nor kill any animal. Lett. M. La Nux.
The American travellers unanimously agree, that the great bats of the new continent suck the blood both of men and animals while they are asleep, and without awakening them. Of this singular fact, no mention is made by any of the Asiatic or African travellers, who speak of the Ternat bats. Their silence, nevertheless, is no adequate proof of their being guiltless, especially as they have so many other resemblances to those great bats, which we denominated vampyres. I have, therefore, thought it worth while to examine how it is possible that these animals should suck the blood of a person asleep, without causing a pain so sensible as to awake him. Were they to cut the flesh with their teeth, which are as large as those of other quadrupeds of the same size, the pain of the bite would effectually rouse any of the human species, however soundly asleep; and the repose of animals is more easily disturbed than that of man. Thus it would also be, were they to inflict the wound with their claws. With their tongue only, then, is it possible for them to make such minute apertures in the skin, as to imbibe the blood through them, and to open the veins without causing an acute pain.
The tongue of the vampyre I have not had an opportunity of observing, but those of several Ternat bats which M. Daubenton attentively examined, seemed to indicate the possibility of the fact; their tongues were sharp, and full of prickles directed backward; and it appears that these prickles, or points, from their exceeding minuteness, may be insinuated into the pores of the skin, and may penetrate them so deep as to command a flow of the blood, by the continued function of the tongue. But it is needless to reason upon a fact of which all the circumstances are imperfectly known to us, and of which some are perhaps exaggerated, or erroneously related.
SUPPLEMENT.
AMONG other remarks which I received from the ingenious M. de la Nux upon this work, after its first publication, were the following respecting these animals. He says, in general terms, that the size and number of the Great Ternat Bats are both exaggerated; that instead of attacking men they invariably endeavour to get from them, consequently never bite but when taken, or defending themselves, which they do then most dreadfully; and that instead of being ferocious animals, they are perfectly gentle in their dispositions. Speaking from his own experience, he says, both the great and small Ternat bats are natives of Bourbon, the isles of France, and Madagascar, in the former of which he had resided upwards of fifty years; when he first arrived there they were very numerous in many places where at present they are not to be found, and for these reasons, that the forests were then adjacent to them, which had been cleared away by the settlements, and that it is only in forests they can subsist; besides, they bring forth but once a year, and are hunted, both by whites and negroes, for the sake of their flesh and grease. The females are in season about the month of May, and produce towards the end of September. They appear to come to maturity in about eight months, since there are no small ones to be seen after April or May, and the young are to be known from the old by their colours being more vivid: they become grey with age, but it is uncertain at what period; at this time their flesh is very disagreeable, and their fat alone, of which they have plenty during the summer, is eaten by the negroes. They never feed upon any kind of flesh, but entirely on bananas, peaches, and other fruits and flowers with which these forests abound: they are exceedingly fond of the juices of certain umbellated flowers; and it is possibly for the purpose of sucking the different species of them that they have such a number of sharp papillæ on their tongues. They never touch the skins of the mango, perhaps because it is resinous. Some of them which have been caught, and kept alive, have been known to eat bread and sugar-canes, but I believe, even in that state, no kind of meat, either raw or prepared. There cannot be any thing to apprehend from 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.