Cowper: Homers Iliad, vii.

wrist. It originally pro IMG:content-0391.png:[blocks in formation] tected only the outside of the forearm, being buckled to the sleeve of the hauberk, or fastened to the hinges on the rings of mail; afterward it was a complete tube, with hinges to encircle the arm. ( Fairholt .) bôil, boy; pout, jowl; cat, çell, chorus, Vambrace. "The vambra or the pouldron they should prize." Drayton: Battle of Agin court. văm-brāçed, a. [Eng. vambrac ( e ); -ed.] Her.: Armed with a vambrace. chin, bench; go, gem; thin, this; vampire is to open the grave, when the reanimated corpse will be found to bleed when cut, and even to move and shriek. One way to lay a vampire is to stake down the corpse (as with suicides, and with the same intention); but the more effectual plan is to behead and burn it. ( Prim. Cult. (ed. 1873), ch. xv.) " Vampires are not mere creations of groundle fancy, but causes conceived in spiritual form to account for specific facts of wasting disease."- Tylor : Prin . Cult . (ed. 1873), ii. 122. 2. The same as VAMPIRE-BAT (q. v.). II. Fig .: One who preys on others; an extortioner or bloodsucker. "There are the vampires of the public and rifiers of the kingdom."- For man : On Revol. in 1688 (1741), p. 11. B. As adj .: Of or pertaining to a vampire: resembling a vampire in character; hence, fig., bloodsucking, extortionate. "There is a whole literature of hideous vampire stories, which the reader will find elaborately discu ed in Calmet."-Tylor: Prim. Cult . (ed. 1873), ii. 192. IMG:content-0392.png:[blocks in formation] six inches, or perhaps seven in very large specimens, and the spread of wings two feet or rather more. The color of the vampire's fur is a mouse tint, with a shade of brown."- Wood : Illus. Nat. Hist ., i. 116. 2. Any species of the group Desmodontes, consisting of two genera, each represented by a single species. They differ from all other bats in the character of dentition, the upper incisors being very large, trenchant, and occupying the whole space between the canines; premolars very narrow, with sharp-edged longitudinal crowns; molars rudimentary or none; œsophagus very narrow; cardiac extremity of stomach greatly elongated, forming a long, narrow cæcum. ( Proc . Zool. Soc ., 1865, p. 389.) The species are sanguivorous, and cling by their extremities to the body of the animal whose blood they may be sucking. "The Vampire Bat is often the cause of much trouble by biting the horses on their withers. The injury is generally not so much owing to the lo of blood, as to the the inflammation which the pre ure of the saddle afterward produces. The whole circumstances have lately been doubted in England. I was therefore fortunate in being present when one (Desmodus d'orbignyi, Wat.) was Vampire-bat. (With skull, showing large incisors.) actually caught on a horse's back. We were bivouacking late one evening near Coquimbo, in Chili, when my servant, noticing that one of the horses was very restive, went to see what was the matter, and, fancying he could detect something, suddenly put his hand on the beast's withers, and secured the Vampire." -Darwin : Naturalist's Voyage (ed. 1838), p. 22. văm-për-işm, *văm-pyr-işm (yr as ïr), subst. [Eng. vampir (e); -ism.] I. Literally : 1. Belief in the existence of vampires; the theory of the existence of vampires. "The horrible theory of vampyrism is that persons who have been victims of it pa , after death, from the pa ive into the active state, and become vampires in their turn." -London Daily Telegraph . 2. The action of a vampire; blood-sucking. II. Fig .: The practice of extortion, or preying on others. "Treason, delusion, vampyrism , scoundrel ism."- Car lyle: French Revol . , pt. ii., bk. iii., ch. ii. văm-plāte, *vam-plet, *vam-palt, subst. [Fr. avant - plat =front or fore-plate.] [VAMBRACE.] Old Arm .: A singular shield of metal, which was affixed to the lance of the armed knight in tilts and tourneys as a guard or shield over the hand. ( Fair IMG:content-0393.png:[blocks in formation] "I fight conspicuous in the van of war." Pope : Homer's Iliad , xiii. 350.