FLYING FOXES 



EVERY one interested in bats should make a 

 point of taking a morning ride along the 

 Westcott Road, Madras, in order to see the 

 flying foxes going to bed. In a compound 

 within a stone's-throw of the Club are some tall casua- 

 rina-trees which form the dormitory of the frugivorous 

 Cheiroptera of Royapettah. Since a bat has no clothes 

 to take off when it goes to bed, having merely to fly up 

 to a branch, catch hold of it with the hooks at the 

 posterior end of the wings, and then let itself hang, the 

 process of retiring for the night, or, rather, the day, 

 should not be a long one. Nor would it be if these 

 winged mammals were amiable creatures. But, alas ! 

 more cross-grained, surly brutes do not exist ! It is 

 one of the strangest freaks of Dame Nature that she 

 should have granted wings — the emblems of purity — to 

 one mammal only, and that the most unclean, loathsome, 

 and ill-tempered of them all. 



Some time after the sun has shown himself above 

 the trees, and long after the fowls of the air are up and 

 doing, the flying foxes begin to think of going to bed. 

 These great creatures, the expanse of whose wings is 

 over a yard, come sailing up from all directions, and, for 



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