THE BATS, 67 



The demon bat has a miniature, very much inferior to 

 itself in size and ugliness, which I hold responsible for the 

 grasshoppers' legs and wings of death's-head moths which I 

 find about one particular corner of the dressing-room. I 

 caught the transgressor once almost flagrante delicto, and 

 sentenced it to be put under chloroform and examined. On 

 recovering from the effects of the chloroform it was set free, 

 for I abhor taking life needlessly. Jerdon puts this and the 

 demon under different genera, and calls the one Hipposideros 

 and the other Megaderma. It does not appear to me that 

 they should be classed among bats at all. They seem rather 

 to be a sort of incarnations of Satan, and might serve as 

 models to Gustave Dore illustrating " Paradise Lost" 



When we speak of the bat we generally have in mind a 

 little animal which spends the day in crevices about the 

 eaves, or in chinks of the window sunshades, squeaking and 

 quarrelling on a small scale with its neighbour, and at dusk 

 sallies forth after mosquitos. With its wrinkled face and 

 small peering eyes it is a type of the race, a very estimable, 

 inoffensive, and humdrum race. Beyond this in their praise 

 it would be affectation to go : their virtues are not of the 

 striking sort. One feels grateful to them, of course, for their 

 unostentatious labours in keeping down mosquitos, small 



