BATS 37 
the ovidean metamorphosis, when the loose ex- 
panding membrane of the hands and arms and 
sides grew to wings. 
But albeit like a bird in its faculty of flight, the 
bat was a mammal still, and was rather like a badly 
constructed flying-machine, at best an improvement 
on the parachute. This then was a risky experi- 
ment on Nature’s part, seeing that to launch a 
mammal on the air is to put it into competition 
with birds, and throw it in the way of its rapacious 
bird enemies, natives of that element and infinitely 
its superior in flying powers. But Nature, we see, 
takes risks of this kind with a very light heart; 
her busy brain teems with thousands, millions, of 
inventions, and if nine hundred and ninety-nine in 
a thousand go wrong, she simply scraps them and 
goes cheerfully on with her everlasting business. 
An amusing person! One can imagine some 
Principality or High Intelligence, a visitor from 
Aldebaran, let us say, looking on at these queer 
doings on her part and remarking: “My dear, 
what a silly fool you are to waste so much energy 
in trying to do an impossible thing.” 
And—nettled at his air of superiority—her 
sharp reply: 
“Oh yes, now you say that, I’m reminded of a 
visitor I once had from—oh, I don’t know exactly 
where—somewhere in the Milky Way—just when 
I was experimenting with my snake idea. To make 
a vertebrate without any organs of progression, yet 
capable of getting freely about—ha, ha, ha, how 
