670 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



swallow, and suffers him to build his nest under the eaves of his dwelling, he abhors 

 the bat, which like an evil spirit avoids the light of day, and seems to feel happy only 

 in darkness. The painter gives to his angels the white pinions of the swan, while his 

 demons are made to bear the black wings of the bat. 



And yet most species of the bat are most inoffensive creatures ; while a closer 

 inspection of their wonderful organization proves them to be far more deserving of ad- 

 miration than of repugnance. Can anything be better adapted to its wants than the 

 delicate membrane, which, extending over the long, slim fingers, can be spread and 

 folded like an umbrella, so as to form a wing when the animal wishes to fly, and to 

 collapse into a small space when it is at rest ? How slight the bones, how light the 

 body, how beautifully formed for flight ! Admire also the tiny unwebbed thumb, 

 which serves the bat to hook itself fast while resting, or to clip off the wings of the 

 flies or moths, which it never devours with the rest of the body. But the exquisite 

 acuteness of the senses of smell, feeling, and hearing in the bat is still more wonder- 

 ful than its delicate flying apparatus. Naturalists, more curious than humane, have 

 blinded bats, and seen, to their astonishment, that they continued to fly about, as if 

 still possessed of the power of vision. They always knew how to avoid branches sus- 

 pended in the room in which they were flitting, and even flew betwixt threads hung 

 perpendicularly from the ceiling, though these were so near each other, that they 

 were obliged to contract their wings in order to pass through them. To explain these 

 wonderful phenomena, Spallanzani and other naturalists of the last century believed 

 the bats to be endowed with a sixth sense ; but Carlyle found that, on closing the ears 

 of the blinded creatures, they lose their wonderful power, and hit against the sides of 

 the room, without being at all aware of their situation. How they are able to distin- 

 guish night from day when shut up in a dark box, is a fact still unexplained. As 

 long as the sun stands above the horizon, they will remain perfectly quiet, but as soon 

 as twilight begins to darken the- earth, a strange piping and chirping and scratching is 

 heard within the lightless dungeon, and scarcely has the lid been raised, when the 

 prisoners rapidly escape. 



Though the temperate regions possess many bats, yet they are most numerous and 

 various in the woody regions of the tropical zone, where the vast numbers of the insect 

 tribes and forest fruits afford them a never-failing supply of food. There also they 

 attain a size unknown in our latitudes, so that both from their dimensions and their 

 physiognomy, many of the larger species have obtained the name of flying-dogs or 

 flying-foxes. 



On approaching a Javanese village, you will sometimes see a stately tree, from 

 whose branches hundreds of large black fruits seem to be suspended. A strong smell 

 of ammonia and a piping noise soon, however, convince you of your mistake, and a 

 closer inspection proves them to be a large troop of Kalongs or Fox-bats {Pteropus) 

 attached head downwards to the tree, where they rest or sleep during the day time, 

 and which they generally quit at sunset, though some of them differ so much from the 

 usual habits of the family as to fly about in the broad light of day. 



It is said that it must have been a very hungry man who first ate an oyster ; and 

 we are not told that the omnivorous Chinese have yet got as far as to include bats 

 among their edibles ; but Mr. Wallace * assures us that the natives of Batchian, one 

 * Malay Archipelago, 341. 



