954 Vestiges of Creation. 



viz., those whose means of finding each other we do not at present know, may not 

 many be guided by light, odour, or sound, not in a condition to be appreciable by our 

 senses, although perhaps there are also others which are endowed with some sense 

 unknown to us ? But to return to our subject; what is the use or object of the inces- 

 sant chirp of the noctule, and other bats? It can hardly be to attract their mates, 

 nor to collect their fellows, for either of these purposes it would probably not be in- 

 cessant ; neither can it be to keep their flocks together, for they are not gregarious, 

 like finches or titmice. It is quite contrary to the habits of most solitary animals. 

 What is the meaning of it then ? Can it be to attract or to paralyze insects ? This 

 seems hardly probable. It may possibly only be uttered when the animal is in a 

 satisfactory hunting-ground, and so it may guide its fellows to the best elevation for 

 that particular evening. Can the echo of this sound enable the bat to know its dis- 

 tance from the various objects which return the echo ? for it is proverbially short- 

 sighted : or, after all, may it not be only one of the awful noises of the night which, 

 whether they were intended to keep man at home, or to enhance the beauties of the 

 day, or for some other reasons, seem at all events to have been ordained by the Creator, 

 under some general rule, if we may, in all humility, be allowed so to speak? — 

 T. Wolley ; Trinity College, Cambridge, March 26, 1845. 



Notice of the Natural History of Creation* 

 Far be it from the Editor of * The Zoologist ' to suppose that the 

 Holy Scriptures need support, or can by any possibility receive 

 support, from his feeble pen. Such a sentiment would not only be 

 egregious folly and presumption on his part, but altogether foreign to 

 the object and intent of the work he has the pleasure of conducting. 

 Still, since a man on detecting poison mixed with food previously 

 agreeable to the palate, and nutritious to the body, very sensibly 

 rejects the food from a dread of the poison; it does become an act of 

 justice, if not of duty, to show him that the poison forms no intrinsic 

 part of the food which he previously thought wholesome and delicious, 

 but that its introduction is the handiwork of an enemy : and so, if a 

 total contempt of the Holy Scriptures, if hypotheses flatly contra- 

 dicting the sacred truths they contain, can be sophistically interwoven 

 with the science of Natural History, it is certainly our province to 

 show that the evil forms no integral part of Natural History, but is of 

 extraneous origin, and introduced — most unskilfully — by the hand of 

 the sophist. In attempting to invent a mode of creation, which, if 

 true, must falsify the whole of Scriptural or revealed religion, the 

 author does certainly take some pains to explain his belief in a kind 



* Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Third Edition. London : John 

 Churchill, Princes-street, Soho, 1845. 



