180 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOPv. 



dom of heaven unless you acknowledge the blessings of God. 5. 

 My brother went off yesterday, and we have heard nothing of 

 him. 6. It is self-evident that without nourishment man, ani- 

 mals, and plants cannot exist. 7. My knife is gone, and none 

 of the children know where it is. 8. Our money is all gone. 9. I 

 know very well how far I have to go in this matter. 10. Where 

 do you go to? 11. I am going to my brother. 12. How far 

 have you to go ? 13. Just to the park. 14. What distance 

 have you to go? 15. About three quarters of a mile. 16. He 

 believed the time had now arrived to open his own path through 

 life. 



KEY TO EXERCISES IN LESSONS IN GERMAN. 

 EXERCISE 115 (Vol. II., page 246). 



1. 3ft 3?r Crater fo uorftrfjtuj ate 36,r Oitfct ? 2. C?r ift nu-fit fo m- 

 ifcfjttg, ate mcin O.ifel. 3. SRtmm, meter me!;r iu\1? monger ate tie 

 Sftetf; erfortert. 4. Obfrfton er ein fdjoncS Santgut befigt, fo mid tcf; ben 

 nod? etiten Sfteil tcS mnnigen an iftn abtreten. 5. Sic tljaten nicb.t8, ai* 

 ikf> itber if)r le^teS Una.liicf bcfl.igen. 6. 3c&. fafc, Dltcmant- in tern Saal 

 a(S ten bltnten ^feiier. 7. > lander er bet t&m blieb, tefto ungetulti.vv 

 mttrte er. 8. en mianclftcn mirt 3 fir Sreunt on fyter abrcifcn V y. 

 Seine X'lbreife tft auf ten YMeqebnten nadiftcn iViMtatS feftgefc^t. 10. 21- ir 

 mollen tiefen iikg geden, 11111 ue I'.intfdjaft in ter 9tal)c 511 feben. 11. 

 flttcibte ate Sroblictyfett mar tn tcr gan^en lyaimiie. 12. Slur (i'in 'JBunf.ii 

 blieb ti'iu tibrta.. 13. Siientanb ift unferer ute fo miirttg, ate ter Sreunc 

 metnce fritters. 



EECREATIVE NATURAL HISTORY. 



THE BAT. 



OFTEN in the summer twilight you may have seen a <1ark- 

 looking object, apparently about the size of a sparrow, flitting 

 hither and thither in the most erratic fashion. Such a strange- 

 looking creature did it appear that one might have fancied it 

 waa some old-world inhabitant of strange form, like those 

 figured in books on geology, which had wakened up after a 

 sleep of ages to have a look round once more on the present 

 state of things. It waa a bat. Upon questioning the rustic 

 wise-acre concerning it, you wore probably told that it was 

 neither bird nor beast, but a sort of cross between them, being 

 bird-like in possessing the power of flight, and also like many 

 a four-footed beast in having a fur, and jaws provided with 

 teeth. Here, however, his fund of information was exhausted. 

 He might be thoroughly acquainted with the habits and haunts 

 of birds, also able to imitate their peculiar notes, but concerning 

 the bat he knew next to nothing. 



And indeed, the peculiar habits of the bat preclude that 

 amount of observation which has been given to moat other 

 animals. Hidden entirely from us during the winter months, 

 and only seen in warmer weather in the dusky evenings, it is 

 only natural that our store of facts concerning it should be a 

 small one. It was a puzzle to the ancients, for they did not 

 know exactly where to place it in their classifications of the ani- 

 mal kingdom. And, apparently in some doubt, Pliny describes it 

 neither tinder the head of beast nor bird, but gives it a small 

 chapter to itself, wherein he observes : " Among the winged 

 animals, the only one that brings forth its young alive, ia the 

 bat ; it is the only one, too, that has wings formed of a mem- 

 brane. This is also the only winged creature that feeds its 

 young with milk from the breast." No difficulty is experienced 

 nowadays in giving the bat a precise place among the o.ther 

 members of the animal kingdom. Since it suckles its young, 

 it belongs to the Mammalia, and bats of all sorts are included 

 in the order of Chiroptera, or hand- winged animals. Why 

 the order to which bats belong should be termed Chiroptera, 

 or hand-winged, is pretty evident from a cursory examination of 

 one of these curious creatures. When its arms and fingers 

 are stretched out, a web-like membrane is seen to extend 

 between each finger, and from arm to leg, and from leg to 

 tail. Hence from the first finger to the tip of the tail on each 

 side there is a membrane which acts as a wing, and as a 

 most important portion of this wing-like structure is formed 

 by the long bony fingers of each hand, the bat may very appro- 

 priately be termed hand-winged. The skeleton of the bat is 

 slightly different from that of other Mammals, and this mainly 

 arises from their different mode of progression. For example, 

 there ia the same difference between the breaat-bone of a bat 



and the breast-bone of a mammal which walks, as there is 

 between the breast-bone of a flying bird and that of an ostrich. 

 As we have pointed out in the paper on the ostrich family, its 

 breast-bone is keel-less, while that of a flying bird has a keel 

 or ridge projecting from it to form a firm base of attachment 

 for the wing muscles. Similarly, the breast-bone of a bat has 

 a projecting ridge, and is very unlike the breast-bone of a 

 man, for example, which is a plane elongated plate of bone. 

 The humerus is short and powerful. The shoulder-joint ia 

 universal in its nature, so that the action of the bat's wing ia 

 particularly free. 



The bat flies for lengthened periods with ease. The Mar- 

 gined Fruit Bats of India will fly for thirty or forty miles away 

 from their haunts, and return the same night, making up a 

 distance of eighty miles. And when one reflects that in their 

 search for guavas they pass over higli hills and through winding 

 passes to the very places where they grow, it is apparent that 

 they possess a high order of instinct. This is also shown in 

 other ways. Speaking of some captive bats, Mr. Bell says : - 

 " One of them displayed, in its search for a means of exit, an 

 ability which was quite extraordinary. It literally flew into 

 every part of the room, and behind and under everything, even 

 under a book case standing against a wall, although there was 

 scarcely a apace of three inches between it and the floor." 

 When brought up in captivity, they will display a certain 

 amount of affection for the person who tends them. Young 

 African Fruit Bats, which have been born at the Zoological 

 Gardens, have displayed their affection for their keeper by 

 mounting upon his shoulder and even licking his face in the 

 same way as a dog. 



The bat is not blind as some have supposed. It can see 

 quite well, and it would appear that its other senses are so 

 well developed that, when it has been deprived of its sight, it 

 would avoid objects which were in its way, and find out 

 retreats that one would have thought were hidden from it in 

 its sightless condicion. We know how a human being, who 

 has been blind for years, may, by the cultivation of his remain- 

 ing senses, perform feats that would be impossible to a blind- 

 folded individual possessing eye-sight, and the similar power 

 of sightless perception possessed by the bat may have been 

 acquired by the necessity there has been for it and its ances- 

 tors to constantly find their way about in the dark. Certainly 

 the experiments of Spallanzani. de Jurine and others, who 

 experimented on some bats which had lost their eyesight, 

 go to prove that these creatures can find their way about 

 without their eyes as marvellously as a man who has been 

 born blind. Some knowledge of this ability of theirs may have 

 given rise to the misleading proverbial expression : "As blind 

 as a bat." Some bata are fruit eaters, and others live on 

 insects. The bats found in this country are insectivorous. 

 During the winter, when food is scarce, they have a long sleep, 

 and in this hybernating condition they may occasionally be 

 seen suspended from the roofs of dark caverns, deserted attics, 

 belfries, &c., holding on by the claws of their hind feet, with 

 their heads downwards. 



This winter sleep i? a curious phenomenon. One has a 

 difficulty in aeeing how life can be sustained for months during 

 the coldest part of the year, without the sleeping animal re- 

 ceiving any food. The eight to ten hours' sleep which man 

 geta, once every twenty-four hours, will bear no comparison 

 with the long periods that hybernating animals, like the bat, 

 take up, because a person would experience very little incon- 

 venience if compelled, in the waking state, to go without food 

 for the same length of time as he slept. If, however, a hyber- 

 nating animal were compelled to go without food, in the waking 

 state, for only a part of the time it takes up in sleeping during 

 the winter months, it would die. The hybernating condition 

 must therefore be widely different from cbe waking state : there 

 must be much less waste of force, and all the vital functions must 

 be at their lowest ebb. The temperature of the body, which ia 

 a mark of the silent combustion going on, will be lower than at 

 other times, and the flow of the blood through the vessels will 

 be much slower. This has been proved experimentally. Mr. 

 Cornish found, upon applying a thermometer to a torpid bat, 

 that it stood at 36, only 4 above the freezing point of water, 

 and the heart beat just sixty times per minute. Upon waken- 

 ing it up, the beats of the heart increased to one hundred per 

 minute, and the heat of the body rose two degrees. It is 



