TAPIR, CAMEL, AND BAT 51 



is evidently uppermost. At this stage there was 

 what to the eye of fancy looks like a bold attempt 

 to grow a nose in the case of a tapir, but it mis- 

 carried. These hoofed beasts are all very hard up 

 for something in the way of a hand to bring their 

 food to their mouths. The camel employs its lips 

 and the cow its tongue ; the muntjae or barking 

 deer of India has attained a tongue of such length 

 that it uses it for a handkerchief to wipe its eyes. 

 So the tapir could not resist the temptation to mis- 

 apply its nose to the purpose of gathering fodder, 

 and the ultimate result was the elephant, whose 

 nose is a wonderful hand and a bucket and other 

 things. The pig, being a swine, debased its nose 

 in a worse way, making a grubbing tool of it. 



There has been another attempt to misuse and 

 pervert this part of the face which I scarcely dare 

 to touch upon, for it is so utterly fantastic and 

 mystical that I fear the charge of heresy if I give 

 words to my thoughts. It occurs among bats, a 

 tribe of obscure creatures about which common 

 knowledge amounts to this, that they fly about 

 after sunset, are uncanny, and fond of getting 

 entangled in the hair of ladies, and should be killed. 

 But there are certain families of bats, named horse- 

 shoe bats, leaf-nosed bats and vampires about which 

 common knowledge is nil, and the knowledge pos- 

 sessed by naturalists very little, so I will tell what 

 I know of them. They are larger than common 

 bats, their wings are broad, soft and silent, like 



