BA TS. 



115 



is something obsolete and paradoxical in every part 

 of its organization. Skin wings were quite in vogue in 

 the days of the Devonian monster-period, but have gone 

 out of fashion among the representative creatures of our 

 latter-day world ; and it is a curious fact that all winged 

 mammals have become nocturnal, as if they could not 

 compete with the talents of their daylight contempo- 

 raries. The winged lemur {Galeopithecus volans), the 

 flying fox, and the flying squirrel are all moonshiners, 

 and dread sunlight as miracle-mongers dread the light 

 of science ; but they all have the exaggerated optics 

 of an owl, evening-eyes, that catch every ray of the 

 fading twilight, while the eyes of the bat proper are 

 as rudimentary as those of a mole or of the strange 

 fishes that were discharged from the subterranean tarns 

 of Mount Cotopaxi. 



Its sensitiveness, on the other hand, is developed to 

 a degree that far transcends the functions of what we 

 generally call the sense of touch. Spallanzani demon- 

 strated that blinded bats can fly around a room for 

 hours without ever touching the walls or ceiling; but 

 the faculty of guessing, without actual contact, the 

 proximity of a solid obstacle is shared by other ani- 

 mals : Canadian night-hunters often hear a moose going 

 at top-speed through a thick forest ; and a blind horse 

 will stop within a few inches of a barred gate. A 

 greater riddle, however, is the question how bats find 

 their food. Is it possible to imagine that they feel the 



