x. FLITTERMICE. 137 



the ranks of those on whom the god of battles happened 

 to smile, determined in any case magnanimously to throw 

 in his lot with the victors. But as Mr. Dallas remarks, 

 this finesse was unsuccessful ; the traitor was scouted by 

 both parties, and has ever since been compelled to make 

 his appearance in public only at night. 



Of those who read the fable there may perhaps be still 

 some who remain in doubt to which party the astute bat 

 was traitor, and perchance a few who with Sir Walter Scott x 

 class them among " birds of evil presage." In any case it 

 may be worth while to point out one or two characters by 

 which the bat is shown to be an unmistakable though 

 strangely modified beast. He is no transitional link be- 

 tween the mammals and the birds, but belongs indubitably 

 to the former group of animals. This is shown by his 

 furry body (though the Collared bat of Malacca has but 

 little to boast of in this respect), by his sharp teeth (though 

 birds of old were not toothless), by the fact that the young 

 are born and suckled, not hatched, (though the Duck-bill 

 among mammals lays eggs) and by the unanimous testi- 

 mony of the whole internal anatomy. Skull and brain, 

 breast-bone and hip, vertebral column and tail, lungs and 

 digestive apparatus, all indicate that the bat is an utter 

 though undeniably lowly beast. I use this word of course 

 in its natural-history sense, and with no hint of the dis- 

 paragement implied by the schoolboy who, on being asked 

 to describe zoologically the cat, replied pithily, " A cat is 

 an animal : our cat is a beast." 



The wing, moreover, of the bat is quite different from 

 the wing of any bird. It is a noteworthy fact, and 

 wonderfully indicative of the resources of Nature, that 

 within the back-boned class the problem of flight has been 

 solved in three distinct ways : nay, four, if we may include 

 1 Quentin Durward, Chapter XX VIII, 



