POPULAR ANTIPATHY. 249 



villages and plantations, where they occasion much mischief by 

 attacking and devouring indiscriminately almost every kind of 

 fruit, from the cocoa-nuts which surround the villages of the 

 peasantry, to the rare and delicate productions which are culti- 

 vated with care by princes and chiefs of distinction. In the 

 lower parts of Java there are few situations where this night 

 wanderer is not constantly observed, and the chase of t,he animal 

 affords occasionally a very agreeable amusement to the inhabit- 

 ants during the beautiful serene moonlight nights of that part o* 

 the globe. 



According to Dr. Bennett there are at least two species of these 

 Bats to be found in Australia. The commonest is Pteropus 

 Edwardsii, which occurs in great abundance about Morton Bay, 

 and the northern districts of New South Wales, where they may 

 be seen in the daytime hanging in dense masses from the upper- 

 most branches of the lofty gum-trees, which bend under the 

 burden as though they would break off and come crashing to the 

 ground. In the neighbourhood of Sydney these Bats are rarely 

 seen, but in the year 1858 a number of them were observed 

 suspended from the topmost branches of the lofty trees in the 

 Sydney Botanic Gardens, where they attracted considerable 

 attention. 



In nearly all the countries where these great fruit-eating Bats 

 occur, they are hunted by the natives as an article of food ; and 

 Leichhardt, the Australian traveller, assured Dr. Bennett that 

 they were by no means unpalatable, notwithstanding that they 

 have when alive a strong and by no means agreeable musky 

 odour. 



It is owing in great part, no doubt, to the peculiarity in the 

 form of the Bats, and to the unnatural character which thus 

 seems to be stamped upon them, that they have always been 

 regarded with more or less of superstition and dread. The poets 

 of almost every age have employed them as the emblems of all 

 that is dark and terrible, and in the popular imagination they are 

 ever ranked with those ill-omened creatures and" chimeras dire " 

 which excite the feelings of loathing and horror. That it is 

 especially the wings of the Bat which have procured for it a place 

 amongst these proscribed and hated creatures may be inferred 

 from xhe fact that those organs are always taken by the artist as 

 the type and model of the winga of the ministers of evil, as thoso 



