CHAPTER V. 



BATS. 



DURING a foot-tour through the Western Jura I once 

 saw a crowd of people in a cutting beneath a railway- 

 bridge, and, clambering down the embankment, found 

 that the workmen had exhumed the fossil remains of 

 a gigantic pterodactyl, a monster with the head of 

 a crocodile and the wings and claws of a bird. As 

 bone after bone was picked out of the gravelly de- 

 tritus, one of the engineers arranged the skeleton in 

 anatomical order; and I still remember the expression 

 of a peculiar speechless interest on the faces of the 

 spectators : even the Savoyard navvies stood around 

 mute, thrilled with the spell of a by-gone wonder-world. 



A similar feeling has often come over me at the sight 

 of a captive bat, wrapped in the folds of its leathery 

 wings or wriggling on the floor in uncouth contortions, 

 and still more vividly in the twilight of an ice-bound 

 cave where I once saw a mass of winged dormice hang- 

 ing together in a clump, motionless, and answering my 

 voice only by a feeble squeak, like the Lemures in He- 



siod's Tartarus. A bat is a living anachronism; there 

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