THE CAROLINA BAT 151 



Nevertheless bats were very often supposed to be birds. 

 Such seems to have been the opinion of the Jews, and 

 the "bird of darkne-^s" is placed in Deut. xiv. 18, among 

 the unclean ones forbidden as food : " And the stork and 

 the heron after her kind, and the lapwing and the bat." 



Aristotle, though he placed the bats among flying 

 animals, and therefore among birds, recognised distinctly 

 the difference in their organisation, and the same thing 

 may be affirmed of Pliny. But in spite of this, and 

 although Albertus Magnus, in the thirteenth century, 

 was acquainted fully with the true nature of bats as 

 being beasts, as also with their habit of hibernating 

 during the cold season, we find that instead of progress 

 a retrogression in knowledge took place after the Middle 

 Ages. 



Thus, Belon in 1557, in his " Histoire de la Nature 

 desOiseaux," includes bats with his birds. At the same 

 time he was not unacquainted with the mode of their 

 reproduction, as the following verse proves : 



" La souris chauve est un oiseau de nuict 

 Qui point ne pond ; ains ses petits enfante 

 Lesquels du laict de ses tetins sustante 

 En petit corps grande vertu reluit." 



Again, almost a hundred years later on — in 1645 — 

 Aldrovandus expressed his conviction that bats were 

 rather birds than beasts, and this in spite of his careful 

 study of them, as proved by his beginning to distinguish 

 different species one from another. 



About a quarter of a century afterward, Ray assigned 

 them their true place, which they have kept ever since. 



But though the bat is a beast, it is a very peculiar one, 

 and is essentially an animal of the air. All its structure 

 is modified for flight, and it rarely descends to the ground. 



