12C 



YHRTEBRATA. 



■ 

 I 



DATS IN A CAVERN". 



to eery many other animals. A horse, in the dark, pauses when he comes to a closed gate, 

 though lie never was on the road before. Nocturnal beasts do not more frequently fall into pits 

 and over precipices than beasts which are abroad during the day, and have their eyes to guide 

 tlnni : and nocturnal birds do not fly against trees any more than daylight birds. People, too, 

 will keep a well-known path, though the night be pitch dark. The explanation of these cases 

 been sought in the supposition of a sixth sense, but as yet no satisfactory solution of such 

 phenomena has been found. 



I bi eding of bats takes place at the very hottest time of the year. The young, which are 

 usually two in number, are naked and helpless at their birth — capable only of clinging to the teats 

 of their mother, which, however, they do with the greatest firmness and pertinacity. This habit 



them is n sssary, for the mother does not lie down, or even stand on the ground, when she 



snckles her young, as is the case with most of the mammalia. She hangs suspended by the nails 

 of her thumbs or more generally by those of her hind feet, to the branch of a tree, or some cranny 

 <>r irregularity in a ruin or cavern. There i> no nest in which she can leave the young ones when 

 she !•> feed, and thus site must bear them about attached to her body till they are capa- 



ble of flight. The female lias no marsupium; but this habit resembles somewhat that of the mar- 

 supial animals. The young are very immature when produced, and their nest and place of safety 

 and r< pose i- the body of their mother. 



S ime <>f the spi cies occasionally fly during the day, but this practice is by no means common, 

 and is confined to Borne of the foreign species, which are in part vegetable-feeders. In temperate 

 climates, they conceal themselves during the day, even in the season of their greatest activity. 

 Caverns, holes of trees, and walls and ruined buildings, are their retreats, and from these they 

 ■ forth as dusk begins to set in, flutter about in their laborious flight, and capture such insects 

 a- are then on the wing — gnats, musquitOS, moths, and beetles, — their wide gape, with its formida- 

 ble teeth, being an excellent trap for the capture of such prey. 



The service which they render to vegetation by the destruction of insects, which in the larva 



prey upon it, i- very considerable, even in temperate climates. Some of the hot countries, 



in which these -warm by myriads, could not, but for them, !»■ inhabited. In humid places, on the 



mar-iii- of tropical forests, inuscpiitos arc troublesome enough as it is, but if the bats did not 



