46 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



to use the hooked claw on the wing to scratch the 

 gum away and pull the eyelids open, and when- 

 ever one came to grief I found that its lids had not 

 been opened. 



One can see at once that an experiment of this 

 kind is useless. The irritation of the gum and the 

 efforts being made to remove it by the animal while 

 flying cloud the extra sense or senses, and it loses 

 its efficiency. 



What the bat can do I discovered by chance one 

 summer afternoon in an English lane. It was one 

 of those deep Hampshire lanes one finds between 

 Selborne and Prior's Dean, where I was walking 

 just before sunset, when two common bats appeared 

 flying up and down the lane in quest of flies, and 

 always on coming to me they circled round and 

 then made a vicious little stoop at my head as if 

 threatening to strike. My brown and grey striped 

 or mottled tweed caps and hats have often got me 

 into trouble with birds, as I have told in a chapter 

 in Birds and Man, and it was probably the colour 

 of my cap on this occasion that excited the 

 animosity of this pair of bats. Again and again 

 I waved my stick over my head on seeing one 

 approach, but it had not the slightest effect the 

 bat would duck past it and pass over my cap, just 

 grazing it boldly as ever. Then I thought of a 

 way to frighten them. My cane was a slim pliable 

 one, which gave me no support, and was used 

 merely to have something in my hand a thin 

 little cane such as soldiers carry in their hands off 



