238 ANIMALS OF THE 



lias the name. These, with several others, whose 

 varieties are too numerous, and differences too 

 minute for a detail, are all inoffensive, minute, 

 and contemptible ; incapable, from their size, of 

 injuring mankind, and not sufficiently numerous 

 much to incommode him. But there is a larger 

 race of bats, found in the East and West Indies, 

 that are truly formidable : each of these is singly 

 a dangerous enemy ; but when they unite in 

 flocks, they then become dreadful. Were the in- 

 habitants of the African coasts,* says Des Mar- 

 chais, to eat animals of the bat kind, as they do 

 in the East Indies, they would never want a sup- 

 ply of provisions. They are there in such num- 

 bers, that when they fly they obscure the setting 

 sun. In the morning, at peep of day, they are 

 seen sticking upon the tops of the trees, and cling- 

 ing to each other like bees when they swarm, or 

 like large clusters of cocoa. The Europeans often 

 amuse themselves with shooting among this huge 

 mass of living creatures, and observing their em- 

 barrassment when wounded. They sometimes 

 enter the houses, and the Negroes are expert at 

 killing them ; but although these people seem 

 for ever hungry, yet they regard the bat with 

 horror, and will not eat it though ready to 

 starve. 



Of foreign bats, the largest we have any cer- 

 tain accounts of is the Rousette, or the Great 

 Bat of Madagascar. This formidable creature is 

 near four feet broad, when the wings are extend- 



Des Marchais, vol. ii. p. 208. 



