42 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



gradual action. The bat is all angles in the act of 

 seizure. Apparently he does not see the insect till 

 he is all but past it ; and then, with incredible power 

 to stop his straightforward flight incredible, although 

 seen hurls himself at it, to right or left, or straight 

 up or straight down. 



The flycatcher and the wagtails, quick as they are 

 with then- sudden, very pretty, little glancings and 

 twists in pursuit of an insect, do not touch the bat 

 in this; the only wing exercise of a bird that to me 

 resembles it is one we sometimes see when two fiery 

 finches are playing at chaser and chased. With 

 the birds, however, it is merely blind flight. No 

 accuracy is aimed at by the pursued, and again 

 and again the pursuer overshoots the mark, even 

 if in the end he succeed. But with the juggler 

 bat is this deadly precision he takes an insect, 

 depend upon it, in each of those abrupt feats. 



For all our wonder at the bats, we cannot be friends 

 with them dirae obscenae volucres. A few, I know, 

 do handle a bat without discomfort, feed him as they 

 feed a pet, get to terms with him. But, for most 

 of us, the bat lives and moves only in the half-light 

 of things eerie, remote ; things that scarcely seem 

 to belong to our kind, familiar earth. With his 

 monstrous sleeps, with his membrane wings, fingered 

 and clawed, there is something that affronts us in 

 the bat. He is harpy of an hour full of fancies, 

 fantastic figure of a world neither day nor night. 



