52 NOSES 



those of the owl, they sleep in caves, tombs and 

 ruins, they do not flutter in the open air, but swiftly 

 traverse gloomy avenues and shady glades, their 

 prey is not gnats and midges, but the " droning 

 beetle," the death's head moth, the cockchafer, 

 croaking frogs, sleeping birds and human blood. 

 The books will tell you that these bats are distin- 

 guished by " complicated nasal appendages con- 

 sisting of foliaceous skin processes around the 

 nostrils," which is quite true and utterly futile. 

 It may do for a dried skin or a specimen in spirits 

 of wine. I have had the foul fiend in a cage and 

 looked him in the face. His whole countenance, 

 from lips to brow and from cheek to cheek, is covered 

 and hidden by a hideous design of 



Spells and signs, 



Symbolic letters, circles, lines, 



sculptured in living, quivering skin. It is a sight 

 to make the flesh creep. The books suggest that 

 these foliaceous appendages are the organs of some 

 special sense akin to touch. Futile again! There 

 are things in Nature still which prompt the naturalist 

 who has not atrophied his inner eye and starved 

 his imagination to cry out : 



Science . . . 



Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, 



Vulture, whose wings are dull realities ? 



Supposing there should be in the unseen universe 



