BATS 39 



ing that she finally succeeded in accomplishing her 

 object this, too, as it were, by means of a subtle 

 trick. For the bird problem had been a very 

 different one; her experiments with flying lizards 

 had suggested it, and she was able to create this 

 new and finer being an inhabitant of the air by 

 giving it its peculiar pointed wedge shape, its 

 covering of feathers, with feathers for flight hard 

 as steel, light as gossamer, bloodless, nerveless. 

 And correlated with shape and flight and life in 

 the air, a development of power of vision which, 

 compared with that of mammals and reptiles, is 

 like a supernatural faculty. 



Her subtle trick, in the case of the bat, was to 

 reverse the process followed in building up the bird; 

 to suspend her beast head down by the toes instead 

 of making him perch with his head up to keep it cool; 

 to neglect the vision altogether as of little or no 

 account; and, on the other hand, instead of the 

 light, hard, nerveless feather wings, to make the 

 flying apparatus the most sensitive thing in Nature, 

 barring the antennae of insects; a bed and field of 

 nerves, so closely placed as to give the membrane 

 the appearance of the finest, softest shot silk. The 

 brains of the creature, as it were, are carried spread 

 out on its wings, and so exquisitely delicate is the 

 sensitiveness of these parts that in comparison 

 our finger-tips are no more quick of feeling than 

 the thick tough hide of some lumbering pachyderm. 



I have handled scores of bats in my time, and 

 have never had one in my hand without being 



