354 THE HARMONIES OF NATURE. 



steering their course through passages only just large enough to 

 admit them without coming into contact with the sides, and even 

 avoiding numerous small threads which were stretched across 

 the room in various directions the wings never, even by acci- 

 dent, touching any of them. These marvellous results led him 

 to believe that these animals are endowed with a sixth sense, the 

 immediate operation as well as the locality of which is, of course, 

 unknown to and inappreciable by us; but the sagacity of Cuvier 

 removed the mystery without weakening the interest of these 

 curious facts, by referring to the flying- membrane as the seat of 

 this extraordinary faculty. According to his view of the subject, 

 the whole surface of the wings on both sides may be considered 

 as an enormously-expanded organ of touch of the most exquisite 

 sensibility; and it is, therefore, by the varied modification of the 

 impulsion of the atmosphere upon this surface that the know- 

 ledge of the propinquity of foreign bodies is communicated. 



But touch is not the only sense which is highly developed in 

 the bats, for the vast extent of the shell of the ear in the in- 

 sectivorous species is undoubtedly of great assistance in the 

 collection of sounds, and their smell is also wonderfully acute. 

 In many of them, particularly in the rhinolophidse whose habits 

 are more completely lucifugous and retired than any others, 



and who are found in 

 the darkest penetralia 

 of caverns, and other 

 places where there is 

 not even the imperfect 

 light which the other 

 genera of bats enjoy 

 the nose is furnished 

 with foliaceous append- 

 ages, formed of the inte- 

 gument doubled, folded, 



Khmolophus. 



and cut into the most 



curious and grotesque forms an organisation evidently intended 

 to give increased power and delicacy to the organ of smell, and 

 thus to supersede the sense of vision in situations where the latter 

 would be unavailable. Thus admirably equipped for nocturnal 

 flight, the bats launch forth in quest of their insect prey, 



