CHAPTER XXVIII. 



BATS AND THEIR HABITS. 



(Chiroptera.) 



ATS form a restricted group of volant mammals consti- 

 tuting the order Chiroptera (i.e., hand- winged). There 

 are upward of one hundred and fifty species of them 

 known to science, but of these perhaps not more than 

 twenty-five of the smaller forms are found within the limits 

 of the United States. It is in the tropical and subtropical 

 regions of the earth, including the many islands of those 

 latitudes wherein the larger species of these truly remarka- 

 ble animals are found. On some islands bats are the only 

 mammals met with, a fact easily accounted for when taken 

 in connection with their extraordinary power of flight; a 

 power made possible in them by the possession of the extension 

 of a delicate membrane included between the greatly elongated 

 and slender digits of the fore-limbs upon either side of the body. 

 These membranes extend so as to reach the hind legs, w r hile in 

 some species they are even produced posteriorly so as to include 

 the tail. This arrangement renders them extremely awkward in 

 most cases in the matter of terrestrial locomotion, while it in- 

 variably insures movements in the air of the greatest ease and 

 grace, unequaled by any other form that flies. In fact the en- 

 tire economy of the animal is especially adapted to this power of 

 aerial progression, and to the capture of their food in that ele- 

 ment. As a rule, their organs of sight are but feebly developed 

 with respect to size, but this is fully compensated for by their 

 great keenness of hearing and smell, and to those keen senses 

 must be added the high degree of tactual sense with which their 

 wing-membranes are endowed. Indeed, in those experiments 

 wherein bats have had the powers of hearing, sight, and smell 

 practically destroyed, they find no difficulty in flying about and 

 avoiding any obstacle met with in their course, and that too, with 

 the greatest apparent ease. Some of the foreign bats are charar 

 terized by great development of the external ears; the peculiar 

 leaf -like appendages surmounting the nose ; or by the possession 

 of tubular nostrils. In the Long-eared bat of Britain, for example, 

 the external ears have a length equal to the entire length of the 



