134 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



unpleasantly sharp nip. " Fierce little warmints is bats," 

 said my father's gardener when, in the days gone by, he 

 somewhat reluctantly aided me in capturing one in the 

 greenhouse. I kept the little fellow for two or three days 

 in a box in the loft over the stable, hoping to make a pet 

 of him. But my efforts were ineffectual. I could not 

 get him to eat though I presented him with the most 

 tempting flies, beetles, slugs, worms, and spiders. He 

 drank water pretty freely from a cainel's-hair brush ; but 

 always seemed in a state of prodigious excitement, his 

 long ears and india-rubber-like wing-membranes being all 

 a-tremble with nervousness or indignation, whenever I took 

 him out. He shuffled along the floor with a curiously 

 awkward jerky hand-over-hand motion, the fore part of 

 the body being somewhat raised from the ground. What 

 became of him I know not. On the fourth morning I 

 found his box overturned and my bat missing. I blamed 

 a great grey and yellow barn owl ; but perhaps unjustly. 



I well remember my disappointment at not being able 

 to tame my little friend for bats may be tamed. Mr. Bell 

 in his British Quadrupeds describes how one kept by 

 Mr. Sowerby, when set at liberty in the parlour, would fly 

 to the hand of any of the young people who held up a fly 

 towards it, and pitching on the hand, would take the fly 

 without hesitation. If the insect was held between the 

 lips, the bat would settle on its young patron's cheek and 

 take the fly with the utmost gentleness; and when a 

 humming noise was made in imitation of an insect, the 

 gentle creature would eagerly search about the lips for the 

 promised dainty. 



Mrs. S. C. Hall, who made a pet of a poor little flitter- 

 mouse a great ungainly boy was illtreating (more in 

 ignorance than in malice, let us hope), says that the 

 little trembling thing became as tame as a mouse, grew 



