204 ANIMAL COMPETITORS 



head downward in her dark retreat or carried 

 safely as she flies abroad. Extreme care and 

 affection are shown by the little mothers, and 

 their babies are long dependent upon them. 

 No animals seem to prey on our bats, but they 

 are quarrelsome and pugnacious among them- 

 selves, and captives are not easily tamed. 



Relations to humanity. Bats are not of 

 much economic interest in this country not 

 as much as in the eastern tropics, where it is 

 quite impossible, in some places, to raise soft 

 tree-fruits unless the trees are carefully and 

 strongly screened against the big fruit-eating 

 fox-bats. Our species, on the other hand are 

 wholly beneficial in their feeding habits, from 

 our point of view, because their fare consists 

 wholly of flying insects, most of which are in 

 some way injurious or annoying to us. It is 

 delightful to watch their dancing flight in the 

 twilight the more so when we try to count the 

 number of mosquitoes they catch ; and it is per- 

 fectly foolish for any one to be afraid of them 

 as some women and girls pretend they are. It 

 is also charged that they carry bedbugs and 

 introduce them into houses. In common with 



