ABOUT BATS 69 



development when compared with the weak-looking 

 hind quarters : it is the appearance in miniature of 

 the skeleton of a monkey. The whole figure, includ- 

 ing the clawed wings and the ugly mouth and head, 

 has been exaggerated and utilized by artists of the 

 grotesque arid the horrible to illustrate the forbidding 

 shapes of demons and devils, such as haunt the cavern 

 of a covyne of witches, or such as infested the Valley 



leo of the Shadow of Death into which Christian adven- 

 tured on his way to Vanity Town. The bat's only 

 real connexion with the fancied supernatural is in 

 those mysterious taps at the window which, in the 

 absence of ivy or other twigs swaying in the night- 

 wind, are often occasioned by some mousing bat 

 lifting moths with scarcely a pause from the lighted 

 pane. 



The bat's connexion with darkness, its wavering 

 and uncertain flight (as with the butterfly, its wing is 



no its rudder), and its mysterious mode of life naturally 

 combine in making the vulgar imagination associate 

 it with supernatural agents of evil. Poetry and the The Bat 

 bat had neither an obvious nor an abiding connexion 

 till Shakespeare disclosed it. He has caught the 

 attractive aspect of bat-life, and by one happy touch 

 has for ever associated the bat with the warm dusk 

 and luxurious repose of a typical summer evening, 

 and with the joyous existence of Ariel (free at last of 

 both Prospero and the pine-tree) circling on its furry 



iso back among the darkening splendours of sundown and 

 singing : 



On a bat's back I do fly 

 After summer merrily. 



EDITOR. 



