23 
OUR BRITISH BATS. 
(InuustRaTED BY THE LANTERN). 
By Mr. T. A. COWARD. 24th January, 1905. 

The Chairman, Mr. James Lancaster, said they welcomed 
that evening the writer of those beautiful little articles on 
country life, presented to them at their breakfast table in the 
morning paper. Those and other articles from the same pen, 
seemed to him like little oases in the desert of business life. 
One of the purest tastes they could cultivate was a love of 
nature, and many of them thanked Mr. George Milner for the 
stimulus that had many times sent them into the country to find 
that— 
‘¢ There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore.’’ 
They were especially blest in that neighbourhood with some of 
the finest scenery in the land—such as Bolton Woods, the 
Abbey of Whalley, and the English Lake District-—just at their 
threshold, so that they ought to enjoy nature and cultivate a love 
of it. It was as an ardent lover of nature and student of animal 
and insect life, that he had pleasure in introducing Mr. Coward 
to them. (Cheers). 
Mr. Coward pointed out that few people know what is the Bat’s 
position in the Animal Kingdom; many imagine it to be a bird, 
insect, or a connecting link between the birds and mammals. 
The Bat is a placental Mammal, generally placed by 
naturalists high in the scale; it usually follows the Primates, 
ranking before the Insectivores and Carnivores, and a long way 
before the far more intelligent Ungulates. It is not actually 
allied to Man, but it shows affinity to the lowest Primates—the 
Lemurs. It is supposed to have been evolved from some terres- 
trial Insectivore, and to have gradually gained the power of 
flight. 
The organs of animals which resemble each other may be 
either analogous or homologous—if their functions simply are 
the same they are analogous ; if their nature and origin are alike 
they are homologous. Connecting links are only found where 
organs are homologous. The fins, tail, and general form of the 
whales, seals, and penguins ‘are analogous to the locomotary 
