Ill 



BATS 



THE bat was formerly looked upon as an uncanny 

 sort of bird, and described as such in the old 

 natural histories. Oh, those ever delightful old 

 natural histories, and the vision of the wise old 

 naturalist examining a recently-taken specimen 

 through his horn-bound spectacles, and setting it 

 gravely down in his books that it is the only known 

 bird which was clothed in fur in place of feathers ! 

 Or, as Plinius puts it, the only bird which brings 

 forth and suckles its young, just as we say that the 

 Australian water -mole is the only mammal which 

 lays eggs. The modern ornithologist will have 

 nothing to do with the creature ; but after his 

 expulsion from the feathered nation it was his 

 singular good fortune not to sink lower in the 

 scale ; he was, on the contrary, raised to the 

 mammalians, or quadrupeds, as our fathers called 

 them ; then on the discovery being made that he 

 was anatomically related to the lemurs, he was 

 eventually allotted a place in our systems next 

 after that ancient order of fox-faced monkeys. 

 And thus it has come to pass that when some 



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