316 



BATS. 



inhabited. In humid places on the margins of tropica 

 forests, mosquitoes are troublesome enough as it is 

 but if the bats did not thin their numbers, they woul 

 be utterly unbearable. Those species too, whicl 

 frequent the towns and settlements are useful in othe 

 respects. Most of the race are miscellaneous in thei 

 feeding, and not very delicate in their taste. The} 

 devour indiscriminately all animal substances, whethe 

 raw or dressed, and whether in a recent or a putric 

 state. 



But though they are thus voracious in their feeding 

 they can endure hunger for a great length of time 

 and the waste of their system appears to be bu 

 small. When the weather is favourable for their 

 feediner, they very soon get fat, and when they are 

 compelled to remain longer in their retreats than 

 usual, the fat is absorbed, and they get lean again. 



In temperate climates, they disappear by the time 

 that the cold evenings of autumn set in. Their 

 retreats are the closest crannies which they can find, 

 and there they are often clustered together in heaps. 

 In high latitudes they remain in their dormant or 

 hybernating itate for a long time ; but the short 

 period during which they do feed is more favourable 

 for them than in lower latitudes, as it is twilight all night 

 long. Wiiile they are hybernating, the digestive 

 functions are wholly suspended, and the circulation 

 so nearly so that it cannot be perceived in the smaller 

 vessels. The respiration, of course, is feeble in the 

 same proportion as the circulation. There is thus 

 very little waste in the system, and very little absorp- 

 tion of fat can supply it ; but how long they could 

 exist in the dormant state before they perished of 

 exhaustion has not been ascertained. The lowest 

 temperature at which, in our latitudes they come out, 

 varies according to the species, from about 42 to 48 

 of the common thermometer. 



The extreme sensibility to light and to touch, 

 which has been already mentioned as not confined to 

 any particular organ, is finely shown in the dormant 

 state. Be that ever so deep, the creature shrinks from 

 the touch, even before actual contact, and so does it 

 from a candle or any other light ; but these have no 

 tendency to awaken it from its profound slumber, 

 which shows that the sensibility is not in consequence 

 of activity in the other functions of the animal. 



When, however, the requisite degree of heat is ap- 

 plied they revive, and show themselves as obedient to 

 itasever. But in order to revive safely they must revive 

 gradually ; for if they are forced by a high tempera- 

 ture, such as exposure to the fire, they awaken only 

 to perish ; and the operation appears to give them 

 pain, something similar to that which is felt when the 

 frozen hands are held to the fire. The injury is pro- 

 bably the same the rupture of the small vessels. 



When they are awakened in that gradual manner 

 which does not destroy them, their circulation, their 

 breathing, and their appetite return ; and if they have 

 slept long, and their fat is nearly all absorbed, they 

 must soon eat, or perish of hunger. Casual awaken- 

 ings during the season of repose are, therefore, highly 

 injurious to them ; and it is to avoid these that they 

 betake themselves to places which are so concealed 

 as that the vicissitudes of the weather do not readily 

 affect them ; but they, of course, do not go into those 

 which never during summer acquire the temperature 

 at which they revive. But the more constant the 

 winter, and the cooler the place of their retreat, they 

 are safer ; as the contrary circumstances are apt to 



rouze them before the season can supply them with 

 food. 



Though the bats are, upon the whole, useful rather 

 than hurtful to man, they are creatures to which 

 poetry and superstition have in all ages had recourse 

 to deepen the feelings of loathing and horror. The 

 bats are things of the doubtful light the dim twi- 

 light, which, in ages of ignorance, converts white 

 stones into ghosts, and bushes into spectres. They 

 dwell in the ruined wall, or the rifted earth ; and thc'v 

 also often found their way into the sepulchres and cv.ta- 

 combs of the ancients. They were thus dwellers \\itli 

 desolation and with death ; and it was but stretching 

 the imagination a little further to suppose that they 

 were in league with these loathed and dreaded powers. 

 And the rapacity of the bats in their feeding during 

 the twilight gloom, and the miscellaneous nature of 

 the food, gave still farther colour to the supposition. 

 Hovering about the temples, they ate greedily the 

 blood and other remains of the sacrifices ; when 

 famine or pestilence, which were then of frequent 

 occurrence, though fortunately known to us chiefly 

 by name, strewed the earth with the bodies of the 

 dead, and when night closed upon the horrors of the 

 battle-field, the bats came to the nocturnal feast ; and 

 as in all cases they came fluttering and apparently 

 formless, with wing most unlike any organ bearing 

 the same name which is spread to the light of day or 

 the sun of heaven, they perfected their claim of poe- 

 tical alliance with the infernal regions, and the powers 

 which held dominion there. As the peacock was 

 :he bird sacred to Juno, the queen of heaven, so the 

 Jat was the creature sacred (or accursed, if the word 

 "s better liked) to Proserpine, the empress of hell. 



The use of them for these purposes is as old as 

 Homer, who very skilfully manages them in height- 

 ening the graphic effect of the splendid passage in 

 which he describes the shrieks and wailings of the 

 rhosts in the regions of woe ; and, after Homer, all 

 )oets and painters who have ventured upon similar 

 delineations, have made use of the bats for the pur- 

 >oses of effect. Even to this day painters must bor- 

 row the wings of bats to their devils, in like mariner 

 as they borrow the wings of pigeons to their angels ; 

 ind one has only to throw a deep Rembrandt shade 

 )ver a piece of canvas, and show a bat's wing partly 

 lisplayed from a cave, in order to give an infernal air 

 o it, and make it, with very little painting, a good 

 oetic representation of the gates of hell. It is easy 

 o see how a race which is linked with such associa- 

 ions should have had but a scanty measure of justice 

 meted out to it by the half superstitious naturalists 

 f the middle ages ; and a remnant of the same su- 

 >erstition is, no doubt, the cause of much of the horror 

 vhich is associated with some of the larger bats of 

 lie warm countries. 



In Britain, though there are several species, the 

 ndividuals are no where numerous, unless where the 

 vhole colony of a country-side are found clustered 

 ogether hybernating, or hiding themselves from the 

 ay in solitary and seldom-frequented caves. This 

 ccurs most frequently in the southern parts of our 

 sland ; and there are some of the rarer British spe- 

 ies which have been found only in such situations. 

 S T o where, however, and of no species, are Uritish 

 ats so numerous as to form a striking feature in the 

 atural history of the country. A few of the com- 

 non bats may be seen flickering about villages and 

 arm yards on the fine stilly summer evenings ; and 



