40 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



struck by its shrinking, shivering motions, the 

 tremors that passed over it like wave following 

 wave, and it has seemed to me that the touch of 

 a soft finger-tip on its wing was to the bat like a 

 blow of a cheese- or bread-grater on his naked body 

 to a man. 



Now any one, even the intelligent foreigner from 

 Aldebaran, would have imagined that such a 

 creature so constructed would not have main- 

 tained its existence in this rough world : a sudden 

 storm of rain or hail encountered in mid-air would 

 have destroyed it, and in its pursuit of insects in 

 leafy places it would have been exposed every 

 minute to disabling accidents. But it did not 

 happen so. That exquisite super-sensitiveness, that 

 extra sense, or extra senses, since we do not know 

 how many there are, not only kept it in the air, 

 able to continue the struggle of life in the particular 

 forest, the district, the region, the continent where 

 it came into being, but sent it abroad, an invader 

 and colonist, to other lands, other continents all 

 over the globe, including those far-off isolated 

 islands which had been cut off from all connexion 

 with the rest of the earth before mammalian life 

 was evolved, and had no higher life than birds, 

 until this small beast came flying over the illimit- 

 able ocean on his wings, to be followed a million 

 years later by his noble relation in a canoe. 



We see then that the bat is a very wonderful 

 creature, one of Nature's triumphs and master- 

 pieces, and on this account he has received a good 



