210 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



and in this position sleeps through the daylight. 

 It sleeps through the winter in the top of some warm 

 steeple or, far more often than we suspect, in dark 

 corners of our houses, and sometimes in hollow trees 

 and deserted buildings and caves. Only when 

 caught by the cold does the bat hibernate. Often 

 it migrates like the birds. 



One of the strangest things about the flittermouse 

 is its voice. It is a penetrating, shrill squeak, so high 

 that many people cannot hear it at all. The chirp 

 of a sparrow is about five octaves above the middle 

 E of the piano, while the cry of the bat is a full octave 

 above that. In England there is a saying that no 

 person more than forty years old can hear the cry 

 of a bat. This is founded probably on the fact that 

 the ears of many of us, especially as we approach 

 middle age, are unable to distinguish sounds more 

 than four octaves above middle E. Some naturalists 

 believe that the shrill squeak which most of us do 

 hear is only one of many notes of the bat, and that 

 the various species have different calls, like those of 

 birds, and probably even have a love-song during 

 the mating season, in late August or early September, 

 which can never be heard by human ears. 



Most bats found in the Eastern States are either 

 large brown house-bats, one of two kinds of little 

 brown bats, black bats, red or tree bats, pigmy bats, 

 or, last, largest and most beautiful of all, hoary 

 bats. The big brown bat, or house-bat, is the 

 commonest. This is the last of the bats to come out 

 in the evening, for each has a certain fixed hour when 



