BATS. 



II 9 



of the tunnel-grotto of Posilippo and the Biels-Hohle 

 in the Hartz are tenanted by hundreds of thousands 

 of bats that avoid all the neighboring caverns ; and our 

 Mammoth Cave, with its countless grottos, has only two 

 bat-holes, whose occupants have never been known to 

 change their quarters. 



Canadian bats hibernate from six to seven months, 

 without food or drink, and without changing their 

 position by a single inch ; but a trance-sleep may come 

 natural to a creature of such limited brains ; as a French 

 lady said of a dying borgne borne, " he hasn't got many 

 eyes to close, et point d 1 esprit a rendre." Phrenologi- 

 cally, the cheiropters stand at the bottom of the scale : 

 the frontal bone of a hog is perfectly fiat, but that of a 

 bat is dished, — bulged the wrong way : its facial angle 

 can be measured only by negative degrees. It would 

 be about as easy to brain a fly as a bat ; but, like flies, 

 cheiropters can boast of a remarkable presence of what 

 mind they are gifted with : it is really impossible to hit 

 a flying bat with a stick ; in a closed room he will baffle 

 the tactics of a whole broom-brigade for minutes to- 

 gether : the word subterfuge must have been derived 

 from his marvellous knack of dodging a blow by a 

 sudden sideward and downward swoop. It has been 

 said that the art of flying will ultimately be learned from 

 bats instead of birds ; but I believe that an artificial 

 wing would bear a closer resemblance to a callow 

 feather apparatus than to the sensitive membrane whose 



