68 ABOUT BATS 



function of sight. No animal, it is thought, has a 

 higher development of touch. In darkness its skin, 120 

 whether of wing, ear, or nose-leaf, not only feels the 

 slightest contact of a stationary or moving object, but 

 apparently even the presence or neighbourhood of an 

 object whether twig, stone, telegraph wire, or wan- 

 dering moth without actually touching it : in brief, 

 bats can feel at a distance I Experiments have been 

 made with them deprived of every sense but touch, 

 and they have been seen to avoid a network of 

 threads stretched in their way, and to pursue, without 

 colliding against the boundaries, very tortuous wind- iso 

 ings to which their flight was confined. 



Where In a passage in Isaiah bats are associated with 



m l es > no ^ f r their def ectiveness of vision, but for the 

 secrecy and obscurity of their abodes in lonely, out- 

 of-the-way nooks and recesses. The bat hides itself 

 (mostly gregariously, though a few are solitary) in 

 ruined roofs and deserted rooms, in bell-towers, among 

 the joists of barns, in the crannies of disused chimneys 

 and unfrequented caves, and in the rotten hollows of 

 forest trees. The smell of their haunt for hibernation, uo 

 in the room (say) of some decayed and forsaken man- 

 sion, a peculiarly ancient and vile pungent odour 

 is often a clue to their habitat, and their destruction. 

 There they may be come upon in vast numbers, 

 hanging in somnolent clusters from the projection or 

 support to which they cling by their hind claws, head 

 downwards, and wrapt in the ghoulish mantle of their 

 skinny wings. 



Skeleton A bat's skeleton shows a strange structure. The 

 o/a*ar* c ^ es ^ i g stron g an( l abnormally capacious ; the fore 150 

 limbs resemble arms and fingers, of disproportionate 



