Ill 



BATS 



The bat was formerly looked upon as an uncanny- 

 sort of bird, and described as such in the old 

 natural histories. Oh, those ever delightful old 

 natural histories, and the vision of the wise old 

 naturalist examining a recently-taken specimen 

 through his horn-bound spectacles, and setting it 

 gravely down in his books that it is the only known 

 bird which was clothed in fur in place of feathers ! 

 Or, as Plinius puts it, the only bird which brings 

 forth and suckles its young, just as we say that the 

 Australian water -mole is the only mammal which 

 lays eggs. The modern ornithologist will have 

 nothing to do with the creature ; but after his 

 expulsion from the feathered nation it was his 

 singular good fortune not to sink lower in the 

 scale ; he was, on the contrary, raised to the 

 mammalians, or quadrupeds, as our fathers called 

 them ; then on the discovery being made that he 

 was anatomically related to the lemurs, he was 

 eventually allotted a place in our systems next 

 after that ancient order of fox-faced monkeys. 

 And thus it has come to pass that when some 



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