BATS. 



317 



they stand accused of making small inroads upon the 

 dairy and the larder ; but still there is not sufficient 

 interest about them for creating much attention, and 

 they have rather to be sought out as curiosities than 

 otherwise. The thinness of their numbers as com- 

 pared with those in the nearly corresponding latitudes 

 of continental Europe, may be accounted for by the 

 nature of the climate, and the effect which, as already 

 explained, it has upon creatures so sensitive. Taken 

 altogether, the temperature of our year is too uni- 

 form for being favourable to this family of animals , 

 and taken in the details, it is too variable and incon- 

 stant. Our summers have too much rain hi them for 

 making good bats' weather ; and our winters are too 

 mild they keep them awake after their food has 

 become scarce ; and they not only awaken them again 

 too early in the season for its reappearance, but they 

 very frequently awaken them to certain destruction in 

 the winter and the spring. 



But there are many countries where bats are far 

 more numerous than any other species of mammalia, 

 and where they are consequently very characteristic. 

 These are the richer parts of the tropical countries, 

 and some of the islands in the warmer seas. Such 

 places are often crowded with bats, which fly in 

 swarms, darkening the twilight almost to the gloom 

 of night ; and during the day coat over the larger 

 caves and places where they hide themselves, as if 

 they were stalactites. These places are also rendered 

 offensive by them, for their forms are lurid and ugly, 

 the odour which they give out is rank and offensive, 

 and their cries when disturbed are harsh and dis- 

 agreeable. 



Of course they are not, from their habits, found 

 in desert or in naked places ; because there they 

 would neither have shelter during the day, nor 

 food during the twilight. Places where life, and 

 especially vegetable and insect life, are rich almost 

 to rankness, are most favourable for them. The banks 

 of the Nile in Egypt, where they dwell in the palaces 

 and sepulchres of forgotten kings, and the temples of 

 forgotten gods, are particularly replenished with 

 them, because the swelling and subsiding jf the Nile 

 cause a vast production of insect life. In India also, 

 especially toward the western coast, where the mon- 

 soons first break, and rain and fertility are most 

 abundant, they appear in great plenty, and swarm in 

 the stupendous cave temples, which were formerly 

 bewn out of the rock with so much labour, but which 



are now nearly abandoned to clustering bats supended 

 from the roofs, and crawling reptiles on the floors. In 

 the fertile parts of New Holland they are also very 

 numerous ; and they are particularly so in the South 

 Sea islands, which appear to be their head- quarters, at 

 least in that part of the world. The prevailing species 

 there is of large size ; and yet Forster mentions that, 

 at the Friendly Islands, he counted more than five 

 hundred suspended from a single tree, hanging in all 

 sorts of ways, some by the heels, and others by the 

 thumb claws. 



In some of these islands they stand accused of 

 being a plague, barely less destructive than that of 

 locusts. They do not confine their depredations to 

 the twilight, or to animal substances, but come abroad 

 at all hours, their numbers darkening the air and 

 their ravages extending to fruits, flowers, the juice of 

 trees, and in short to every thing consumable. In 

 some places, however, the inhabitants make nearly 

 the same reprisals on this species, as the Arabs do on 

 the locusts ; they eat them and consider them a 

 delicacy. Even the French in the isle of Bourbon, 

 follow the fashion of the Moors and Malays in this 

 species of food ; they make soup of the bats, which 

 is said very nearly to resemble hare soup, both in 

 colour and ; n flavour. 



In America, especially in the northern, or richer 

 part of South America, bats are also very numerous, 

 and the larger species there equal in size, and far 

 outdo, in uncouth appearance, the largest and worst 

 looking of their congeners of the East. It is there 

 where the vampire stands accused of sucking the 

 blood not only of single individuals of the human 

 race, and single animals of other species while asleep, 

 but of cutting off in this way whole herds of cattle, 

 when these were first introduced into South America 

 by the missionaries. Many of these accounts are no 

 doubt exaggerated, and not a few of them are, in all 

 probability, utterly groundless ; but still they have 

 been so often repeated, that they cannot be altoge- 

 ther without foundation. The superstitions which 

 we have mentioned as being continued from the time 

 of Homer, must no doubt have done much to heighten 

 the pictures of the American bats ; but their effect 

 could not have continued without at least some admix- 

 ture of truth. 



The details of the bat family are much too exten- 

 sive for a single article in a popular work. There 

 are not fewer than 140 or 1 j() species or varieties, 

 forming many genera or subgenera. Several of these, 

 however, are made up from museum specimens, of 

 the manners, or the native localities of which, little or 

 nothing is known. These, of course, do not come 

 within the scope of popular natural history, as they 

 are merely curiosities to look at, which have got " no 

 story to tell." Of those which have a history, the 

 more remarkable species can be more advantageously 

 mentioned under the names of the genera to a very 

 brief analytical list of which we shall devote the 

 remainder of this article. 



The family admit of convenient division into two 

 sections ; first, those which have the grinders adapted 

 for bruising vegetable food ; and secondly, those 

 which have not, the last being the true bats. 



I. With teeth for bruising vegetable matter. This 

 group comprehends by far the smallest number. 

 There are two genera, which differ in their characters, 

 and the species are also subject to considerable varia- 

 tions, and often to local valuations of size and colour 



