BATS 49 



developments and excrescences on the face which 

 give to some species a more grotesque countenance 

 than was ever imagined by any medieval artist in 

 stone — these are doubtless all sense-organs, and the 

 question is, are these all additions to the one sense 

 we know of — an extension and refinement of the 

 sense of touch ? I think they are more than that, 

 and there are a few facts that incline one to believe 

 that knowledge comes to the bat through more 

 ports than one — ^knowledge of things far as well 

 as near. One observation made by Millais points 

 to this conclusion. He noticed that a crowd of 

 noctule bats that sheltered in a hollow tree by day, 

 on issuing in the evening all took flight in the same 

 direction, and that the line of flight was not the 

 same, but varied from day to day ; that on follow- 

 ing them up to the feeding area he discovered that 

 insects were always most abundant at that spot on 

 that evening. It came to this — that on issuing 

 from the hollow tree every bat in the crowd, 

 issuing one or two at a time and flying straight 

 away, knew where to go, south, east, west, or 

 north, to some spot a mile or two away. The bat 

 too, then, like the far-seeing vulture, is " sagacious 

 of his quarry from afar," but what Nature has 

 given him in place of his dim, degenerate eyes to 

 make him sagacious in this way remains to be 

 found out. 



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