BATS 39 
ing that she finally succeeded in accomplishing her 
object—this, too, as it were, by means of a subtle 
trick. For the bird problem had been a very 
different one; her experiments with flying lizards 
had suggested it, and she was able to create this 
new and finer being an inhabitant of the air by 
giving it its peculiar pointed wedge shape, its 
covering of feathers, with feathers for flight—hard 
as steel, light as gossamer, bloodless, nerveless. 
And correlated with shape and flight and life in 
the air, a development of power of vision which, 
compared with that of mammals and reptiles, is 
like a supernatural faculty. 
Her subtle trick, in the case of the bat, was to 
reverse the process followed in building up the bird; 
to suspend her beast head down by the toes instead 
of making him perch with his head up to keep it cool; 
to neglect the vision altogether as of little or no 
account; and, on the other hand, instead of the 
light, hard, nerveless feather wings, to make the 
flying apparatus the most sensitive thing in Nature, 
barring the antennae of insects; a bed and field of 
nerves, so closely placed as to give the membrane 
the appearance of the finest, softest shot silk. The 
brains of the creature, as it were, are carried spread 
out on its wings, and so exquisitely delicate is the 
sensitiveness of these parts that in comparison 
our finger-tips are no more quick of feeling than 
the thick tough hide of some lumbering pachyderm. 
I have handled scores of bats in my time, and 
have never had one in my hand without being 
