48 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



inches of my face, to remain there suspended 

 motionless like a hover-fly on misty wings that 

 produced a loud humming sound; and when thus 

 suspended, it has turned its body to the right, then 

 to the left, then completely round as if to exhibit 

 its beauty its brilliant scale-like feathers changing 

 their colours in the sunlight as it turned. Then, 

 in a few seconds, its curiosity gratified, it has 

 darted away, barely visible as a faint dark line in 

 the air, and vanished perhaps into the intricate 

 branches of some tree, a black acacia perhaps, 

 bristling with long needle-sharp thorns. 



The humming-bird is able to perform this feat a 

 hundred times every day with impunity by means 

 of its brilliant vision and the exquisitely perfect 

 judgement of the brilliant little brain behind the 

 sight. But I take it that if the bird had attempted 

 the feat of the bat it would have killed itself. 



It is a rule in wild life that nothing is attempted 

 which is not perfectly safe, though to us the action 

 may appear dangerous in the extreme, or even 

 impossible. At all events, I can say that these 

 bats in a Selborne lane taught me more than all 

 the books they made me see and understand the 

 perfection of that extra sense. 



But it is just that same sense which Spallanzani 

 and Cuvier wrote about, and we cannot but think 

 that the bat has something more than this. That 

 peculiar disposition of glands and nerves on the 

 wings, the enormous size of the ear in the great- 

 eared bat, the ear-leaf, and leaf -nose, and the other 



