STRANGE ANIMALS AND THEIR WAYS. 357 



dropped the moment my fingers touched the head of the 

 bat. With a third I waited until the bat seemed to be ac- 

 tually swallowing, and unable to either discontinue that 

 process or open its mouth to any extent. 



8. Its rage and perplexity were comical to behold, and, 

 when the fly was really down, it seemed to almost burst 

 with the effort to express its indignation. But this did not 

 prevent it from falling into the same trap again ; and, to 

 make a long story short, it finally learned by exjierience 

 that, while chewing and swallowing were more or less in- 

 terrupted by snapping at me, both operations were cpiite 

 compatible with my gentle stroking of its head. And even 

 a bat has brains enough to see the foolishness of losing a 

 dinner in order to resent an unsolicited kindness. 



9. In a few days the bat would take flies from my fin- 

 gers ; although, either from eagerness or because blinded by 

 the light, it too often nipped me sharply in its efforts to 

 seize the victim. Its voracity was almost incredible. For 

 several weeks it devoured at least fifty house-flies in a day 

 (it was vacation, and my playmates had to assist me), and 

 once disposed of eighty between daybreak and sunset. 

 This bat I kept for more than two months. It would shuf- 

 fle across the table when I entered the room, and lift up its 

 head for the expected fly. When traveling it was carried 

 in my breast-pocket. In the fall it died, either from over- 

 eating or lack of exercise, for I dared not let it out of doors, 

 and it was so apt to injure itself in the rooms that I seldom 

 allowed it to fly. I should add that it drank frequently 

 and greedily from the tip of a camel's-hair pencil. The 

 following bits of bat biography are from White's " Natural 

 History of Selbome " : 



10. " Having caught a lively male specimen of the 

 common ' long-eared bat ' and placed the little fellow in a 

 wire-gauze cage, and inserted a few large flies, he was soon 

 attracted by their buzz, and, pricking up his ears (just as a 



