66 TEXT-BOOK OF ZOOLOGY 



the present day it is the fashion to equip dragons and devils with bats' 

 wings. Ignorant people, again, charge them with eating up the bacon in 

 the larder ; but the structure of their teeth alone suffices to disprove this 

 charge. (Who is probably the guilty party?) Equally absurd is the 

 belief that they entwine themselves in the hair of people. 



2. Bats, like other flying or fluttering creatures, progress with much 

 greater difficulty than animals which move on the ground. (Why ?) In 

 proportion as an animal moves with greater difficulty, it requires to exert 

 greater force to execute its movements, and the more force an animal 

 expends, the larger the quantity of food it must take in order to replace 

 lost energy. Bats, accordingly, are extremely voracious creatures. Thus, 

 in one instance a bat is known to have consumed twelve specimens of 

 the noxious cockchafer at one meal; and as bats prefer to fly in the 

 dark, and live mostly on moths, the larvse of which devastate our fruit 

 and forest trees, we must consider them as animals of extraordinary utility 

 to man, which he should endeavour as much as possible to preserve. They, 

 in fact, continue during the night the work performed by the song birds 

 during the day, and are an excellent "night police," so to speak, as we 

 may learn from the following instance : At the beginning of this century 

 a large number of oak-trees were cut down in the neighbourhood of Hanau 

 (Germany), in the hollow trunks and branches of which thousands of bats 

 were found in the hibernating condition. In sawing and splitting up these 

 trees many of the animals perished from the cold, many were killed 

 wantonly. The result was a marked and rapid increase in the larvse of 

 the Processional moth, which latter had been hitherto for the most part 

 destroyed by the bats. From that time onwards these insect pests 

 increased to such a degree that in the course of the following years first 

 all the oaks, and afterwards also many other trees, for miles around were 

 exterminated. 



3. Its Enemies. — The owl pursues the bat during its flight ; the 

 marten, the polecat, the weasel, and the cat while it is at rest. It, 

 however, manages to protect itself against these marauders by choosing 

 for its refuge places difficult of access, such as cornices, small projections 

 on vertical walls, etc. Its gray colour also is a protection (protective 

 colouring). A sleeping bat may almost be mistaken for a dusty spider's 

 web. 



Related Species. 



1. Insectivorous, Bats. — A large number of bat species are found in 

 Britain and the neighbouring continent. All of these in their structure 

 and mode of life much resemble the long-eared bat. Only two species, the 

 Large and Small Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophusferrum-equinum and Rhino- 



