AN OCTOBER DIARY. 285 



save a clickinof sound, which is a uniform noise, made I 

 know not how, but certainly not with the teeth, although 

 it gives that impression invariably to the listener. The 

 mouth is always widely opened when the sound is ut- 

 tered, and if the jaws were rapidly closed and opened, 

 the movement could be seen. Not depending on sight, 

 I have placed a strip of thin paper in their mouths, at 

 the time, but it was not perforated. It is, therefore, a 

 guttural, not a dental, click. 



Can our little bats be tamed ? Romanes, in his volume 

 on "Mental Evolution in Animals," gives an instance 

 of a large bat in the Mauritius, which was both tame 

 and intelligent; but the little bats in New Jersey do not 

 appear to ever become so, however kindly they are 

 treated, or however young they may be when the tam- 

 ing process begins. 



In studying the habits of our few remaining mam- 

 mals, I have always found that the character of the 

 voice has much to do with the degree of the creature's 

 intelligence. The animal need not be noisy ; but if it 

 is able to utter a considerable series of quite different 

 sounds in quick succession, then the more pronounced 

 are all the characteristics of the animal, and its cunning 

 will be quite apparent. For instance, it is commonly 

 supposed that a rat merely squeaks; but it has really an 

 elaborate series of utterances, some of which are quite 

 musical, and no one who has suffered " a plague of rats " 

 can doubt that they are very cunning creatures. Even 

 mice are more cunning than is supposed, but they suffer 

 in comparison with rats, in this regard, because of their 

 excessive timidity. Let a mouse feel assured there is no 



