LONG-EARED BAT. 127 



tion of their manners, answering extremely well 

 to the general description of those monsters. 



I know not whether it may be worth while to 

 mention the celebrated experiments of Spallan- 

 zani, respecting a supposed additional sense or 

 faculty in Bats, enabling them, when deprived of 

 sight, to avoid any obstacles as readily as when 

 they retained their power of vision. These expe- 

 riments are cruel, and, perhaps, do not lead to 

 any very important discoveries in the animal oeco- 

 nomy: nevertheless, that I may not seem entirely 

 to neglect a phenomenon which has been thought 

 worthy of attention by several eminent experi- 

 mentalists, I shall here give a short abstract of the 

 professor's observations. 



Having observed that Bats would fly in the 

 darkest chambers with precision, and not even 

 touch the Avails, he found them equally exact in 

 their motions when the eyes were closely covered; 

 and at length he destroyed the eyes, and covered 

 the socket with leather; and even in this state 

 the animal continued to fly with the same preci- 

 sion as before; avoiding the walls, and cautiously 

 suspending its flight in seeking where to perch. 

 It even flies out at a door without touching the 

 architraves. The abbe repeated his experiments 

 on several species of bats ; and with the same suc- 

 cess. These experiments were repeated by Vas- 

 salli at Turin, by Rossi at Pisa, Spadon at Bologna, 

 and Jurin at Geneva. The professor's arguments 

 for supposing that in these instances no other 

 sense can supply the place of sight are .these : 



