OF THE UNITED STATES 431 



nized by the animal is evidenced by its great anxiety to take to 

 the wing, or, if this be impracticable, to ascend to some point 

 where it can hitch itself up by the claws of the hind legs in its 

 usual position when at rest." With hints of this nature before 

 us, the study of the skeleton in various species of bats becomes 

 intensely interesting. 



Mythological literature from the dawn of history has used the 

 bat as the emblem of everything uncanny, it even having been 

 made sacred to Proserpine, the Empress of Hell. Likewise, the 

 animal has by the superstitions of all ages been regarded with 

 the utmost dread and horror, or as a popular writer puts it, the 

 " use of bats for these purposes is as old as Homer, who very 

 skillfully manages them in heightening the graphic effect of the 

 splendid passage in which he describes the shrieks and wailings 

 of the ghosts in the regions of woe; and after Homer, all poets 

 and painters who have ventured upon similar delineations have 

 made use of the bats for the purposes of effect. Even to this 

 day, painters must borrow the wings of bats for their devils, in 

 the same way that they borrow the wings of doves for their 

 angels; and one has only to throw a deep Rembrandt shade over a 

 piece of canvas, and show a bat's wing partly displayed from a 

 cave, in order to give an infernal air to it, and make it, with very 

 little painting a good poetical representation of the gates of hell. 

 It is easy to see how a race which is linked with such associa- 

 tions, should have had but a scanty measure of justice meted out 

 to it by the half -superstitious naturalists of the Middle Ages; 

 and a remnant of the same superstition is no doubt the cause of 

 much of the horror which is still connected with some of the 

 larger species of warm countries." 



Modern science, however, is rapidly dissipating such ideas, 

 and in time will eliminate them altogether. 



Of the foreign bats we may note the great tailless, fruit-eating 

 "Flying Foxes," of the East Indies, of the family Ptero pod idee, one 

 species measuring five feet across its outstretched wings. This, 

 also known as the Roussette bat (and allied forms), often con- 

 gregate in vast numbers in the forests, and in settled parts do 

 much damage. Their history is full of interest. Several other 

 very remarkable genera belong to the same family. Then there 

 are a large number of the Leaf -nosed bats, already alluded to, 

 and the famous blood-suckers or Vampires, of both of which a 

 great deal has been said and written. 



