312 



BATS. 



closed, though, from the slower circulation, and the 

 fact of only purl of the blood passing through the 

 lungs, that catastrophe would not take place so 

 speedily. So also, if the muscles of the abdomen are 

 divided, or paralysed, or otherwise rendered incapable 

 of acting, the air remains in the lungs, and by that 

 means the animal is suffocated. 



The skin or covering of the batrachia is in all cases 

 simple, without crust, scales, hair, or any other appen- 

 dage ; and there are some of them that have even no 

 nails on their toes. Those that have teeth have 

 them very small, fitted rather for securing insects 

 and larvae, which they seize with the mouth, than 

 for biting any animal or other substance. They have 

 no weapon either of offence or defence ; for though 

 it is said that pores on the backs of some of the 

 foreign species secrete an acrid poison, yet that is 

 probably no better founded than the old stories of the 

 venom of the common toad, or of the medicinal jewel 

 which it carried in its head. 



Taken as an order, they are among the simplest, 

 and certainly the most harmless of animated beings. 

 They doze out the cold season, or other season un- 

 suitable to their habits, in holes of the earth, or at 

 the bottom of the waters. The common frog is 

 especially fond of hybernating in springs, no doubt 

 because of their uniform temperature during the 

 winter. But so far from doing harm there, it tends 

 to render them sweet and pure, by making its 

 first and last meals for the season upon any eggs or 

 larvae that may happen to be there. In the depth 

 of its hybernation the frog does not eat, and there- 

 fore its mouth remains perfectly close all that time, 

 and, from the general rigidity of the all but lifeless ani- 

 mal, it is not easy to be forced open. On this account 

 It has sometimes been said that the lips of the frog 

 adhere and seal up the mouth while it hybernates, 

 an operation for which there could not be any possi- 

 ble use. 



There is nothing which man cultivates, cherishes, 

 or in any way sets a value upon, that is in the least 

 injured or interfered with by any of the batrachia. 

 The bull-frogs, indeed, are " horrible musicians," and 

 the love songs of those of our own country are cer- 

 tainly not so tuneful as the songs of birds. Many of 

 the species also offend against our notions of beauty, 

 but in that respect the fault is more in the narrow- 

 ness of our standard than in the animal. Both our 

 notions and our vocabulary would require to undergo 

 much alteration before we could call a toad " hand- 

 some;" but uncouth as the toad is in its grprernl 

 appearance, it has a beautiful and most expressive 

 eye, an eye by no means deficient in speculation ; 

 and it is not unsusceptible of attachment, or insensi- 

 ble to kindness. There have been instances of " pet 

 toads," which, though they lived in retirement in the 

 winter and during the heat of the day, according to 

 the habit of the race, yet knew their master's voice, 

 and came leaping from their hiding place at his call 

 on the fine summer evenings. 



The common toad, at variance as its appearance is 

 with our usually-received notion of beauty, is not the 

 most ungainly of the race. Some of the foreign 

 species are much larger, and also more rough and 

 warty in their appearance. One of the most singular 

 looking is perhaps the Surinam toad (liana pipa, Lin- 

 naeus), which may be regarded as a sort of marsupial 

 reptile. The eggs are placed by the male on the 

 Oack of the female, much in tne same way as if they 



were the tubers or seeds of vegetables ; and after they 

 are fecundated, the female betakes herself to the water. 

 There she remains with the back partially exposed. 

 The skin of her back swells or puckers up, and forms 

 cells in which the eggs are not only hatched, but the 

 tadpoles nouri.-hed till their feet begin to grow and 

 their tails to drop off, after which the female returns 

 to the land. This is perhaps the most singular mode 

 of rearing a progeny which is found in the whole 

 range of the animal kingdom. It is somewhat anala- 

 gous to marsupial nourishment in form, but it is not 

 so in principle; for the young of the marsupial ani- 

 mals are not only quickened, but advanced to a cer- 

 tain stutre of their growth before they are deposited 

 in the marsupial receptacle; whereas the eggs of this 

 animal, when placed on the back, are only separate 

 elements of the organic being, and would never 

 advance to maturity, or become animated at all with- 

 out the other elements. 



It now only remains to mention the subdivisions 

 of the order to which to refer for some notices of the 

 more remarkable species. 



There are two divisions or sub-orders batrachia 

 without tails, and batrachia with tails. 



Of tailless butrachia, the genera are : TREE FROG& 

 (Hyla), COMMON FROGS (Rann\ and TOADS (Bufo); 

 but by some these genera are united, and by others 

 they are further subdivided. 



Of tailed batrachia, the genera are : SAT.AMANDRA, 

 (Salamander); MENAPOMA ; AMPHIUMA; Axo- 

 LOTL ; MENOBRANCHUS ; PROTEUS; and SIREN. 

 These are by no means so common as those of the 

 former division ; the history of some of them is very 

 imperfect ; and there has been a little confusion pro- 

 duced by confounding them with the saurian reptiles, 

 and calling them lizards. 



BATS ( Vespertilionida;). A very rumerous family 

 of mammalia, belonging to the order or sub-order 

 Cheiroptera, or animals with winged hands ; that is 

 with the skin between the ringers of the anterior 

 extremities, between these and the posterior ones, 

 arid in some instances between the posterior ones 

 including the tail, so much produced and capable of 

 extension as to answer for flight. 



Bats have, in all ages, been perplexing objects to 

 systematic naturalists. They have been so on account 

 of what appears to be their double character, the 

 general structure of mammalia, and the motion of 

 birds, Wi h the ancients they were aves non aves, 

 " birds yet not birds," and in the progress of natural 

 science to something like a structural classification, 

 they were sometimes arranged with one kind of ani- 

 mals and sometimes with another. Aldrovandi 

 classed them with the ostrich, which, though it now 

 appears absurd, was in accordance with the most 

 striking, and therefore the first chosen ground of 

 classification the element in which the creatures 

 moved. The bats were quadrupeds which could fly, 

 but they could walk on the ground very imperfectly, 

 or not at all. Ostriches were birds which could run 

 well, but were altogether incapable of flight. Thus 

 each had the structure of the one class and the motion 

 of the other, which made them resemble each other 

 as a sort of mongrels. 



If, however, the action itself, or the organisation 

 by which it is performed, be examined with even a 

 moderate degree of attention, it will clearly appear 

 that the motion of the ostrich along the ground is 

 not the walk of the mammalia, neither is the motion 



