L24 



V KKTEBRATA, 



I li MAT SIZF. OF LIFE. 



Iir.A!) Of HBO ADEEM -SIZE OF LIFE. 



UAT. 



of the bats for the pnrposea of effect 



of which they move easily on the ground, terminate in 

 strong claws, which they use in clinging to the crevices 

 of walls, rocks, and buildings: the thumbs are each 

 furnished with a hook, which also answers the pur- 

 pose df Bupport in the hidden places they select for 

 their abodes. In one large division of the family 

 there is a curious leaf-like appendage on the nose, 

 variously developed in the different species, whence 

 they are called Leaf-nosed Bats. Some have the ears 

 enormously expanded, and some have a prehensile 

 power in the tail. 



Though the bats are, upon the whole, useful rather 

 than hurtful to man, they are creatures to which po- 

 etry and superstition have in all ages had recourse to 

 deepen the feelings of loathing and horror. They are 

 not only of strange forms, but they arc things of the 

 doubtful light — the dim twilight — which in ages of 

 io-norance converts white stones into ghosts and bushc- 

 into specters. They dwell in the ruined wall, or riven 

 earth, or gloomy cavern : in Eastern countries the\ 

 often find their way into the sepulchres and catacoml» 

 of the ancients. They have been observed, therefore, 

 as dwellers with desolation and death ; and it was 

 stretching the imagination but a littie further to sup- 

 pose that they were in league with these loathed and 

 dreaded powers. 



The rapacity of the larger bats, such as are found 

 in the warm countries, feeding during the twilight 

 gloom, gave color to these suppositions. Hovering 

 about the Pagan temples, they ate greedily the blood 

 and other remains of the sacrifices. When famine or 

 pestilence, which were then of frequent occurrence, 

 strewed the earth with the bodies of the dead, or when 

 night closed upon the horrors of the battle-field, the 

 bats throno-ed to the nocturnal feast. As in all cases 

 they came dim and apparently formless, with wing 

 most unlike any organ bearing the same name which 

 is spread to the light of day, they perfected their claim 

 of poetical alliance with the infernal regions, and the 

 powers which hold dominion over them. Hence, as 

 the peacock was the bird sacred to Juno, the queen of 

 Heaven, so the bat became the creature sacred, or ac- 

 cursed, as it may be, to Proserpine, the emj 

 of Hell. 



The use of bats for these purposes is as old 

 as Homer, who very skillfully manages them i: 

 heightening the graphic effect of the splendid 

 passage in which he describes the shrieks an<: 

 waitings of the ghosts in the regions of woe i 

 and alter Homer, all poets and painters who have 

 ventured upon similar delineations have made 

 Even to this day, painters must borrow the wings oi 



bata for their devils, in the same way that they borrow the wings of doves for their angels; and 



