3^4 



MAALMALS OF AMERICA 



creature he was. One of his wings had been 

 injured by the person who caught him, so that 

 he could not fly, and was obliged to live on the 

 floor of his cage. Yet, although he could take no 

 exercise, he used to eat no less than seventy 

 large bluebottle flies every evening. -As long as 

 the daylight lasted, he would take no notice of 

 the flies at all. They might crawl about all over 

 him, but still he would never move. But soon 

 after sunset, when the flies began to get sleepy, 

 the Bat would wake up. Fixing his eyes on the 

 nearest fly, he would begin to creep toward it so 

 slowly that it was almost impossible to see that 

 he was moving. By degrees he would get within 

 a few inches. Then, quite suddenly, he would 

 leap upon it, and cover it with his wings, pressing 

 them down on either side of his body so as to 

 form a kind of a tent. Next he would tuck down 



his head, catch the fly in his mouth, and crunch 

 it up. Then he would creep on toward another 

 victim, always leaving the legs and the wings 

 behind him, which in some strange way he had 

 managed to strip otif, just as we strip the legs 

 from shrimps. 



"I often watched him, too, when he was drink- 

 ing. .\s he was so crippled. I used to pour a 

 few dro])S of water on the floor of his cage, and 

 when he felt thirsty he would scoop up a little in 

 his lower jaw, and then throw his head back in 

 order to let it run down his throat. But in a 

 state of freedom Bats drink by just dipping the 

 lower jaw into the water as they skim along close 

 to the surface of a pond or a stream, and you 

 may often see them doing so on a warm sum- 

 mer's evening. They get both food and drink on 

 the run." 



Photograph by Dr. R. W. Shufcldt 



BROWN BAT ASLEEP 

 These Bats sleep head downward, hanging by their feet and " hooks " 



