252 BA TS 



very accurate notion of their zoological position, if we use the term mouse in the 

 popular signification, in which it embraces animals like the shrews, as well as the 

 true mice. 



THE FRUIT- BATS 

 Family PTEROPODID^ 



The largest of all bats are the so-called flying foxes, or fruit-bats, of the warmer 

 regions of the Old World, which differ from the other members of the order in their 

 purely frugivorous habits, and in certain details of structure partly caused by adap- 

 tation to their special mode of life. It is highly probable, as Professor T. Bell ob- 

 serves, that some of these huge fruit-bats "with their predatory habits, their 

 multitudious numbers, their obscure and mysterious retreats, and the strange com- 

 bination of beast and bird which they were believed to possess, gave to Virgil the 



SKELETON OF FRUIT-BAT. 

 (One-tenth natural size.) 



idea, which he has so poetically worked out, of the harpies which fell upon the 

 hastily-spread tables of his hero and his companions, and polluted, whilst they de- 

 vour, the feast from which they had driven the affrighted guests. ' ' 



Since the fruit-bats differ so essentially from all the other members of the order, 

 both in habits and structure, they are not only referred by naturalists to a separate 

 family, the Pteropodida, but are likewise distinguished as a special suborder, 

 appropriately termed the Megachiroptera, or large bats. 



As a group, the fruit-bats are characterized by their generally large size, and 

 by the peculiar nature of their teeth, as well as by certain features connected with 

 the wings, ears, and tail. As regards the teeth, they are characterized by the 



