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VESPERTILIO BAT. 
Generic Character, 
Denies omnes erecti, acumi- 
nati, approximati. 
Manus palmatae volitantes 
membrana corpus cingente. 
Teeth erect, sharp-pointed, ap- 
proximated. 
Hands palmated with a mem- 
brane furrounding the body 
and giving the animal the 
power of flight. 
The curious formation of these animals cannot 
be contemplated without admiration : the bones 
of the extremities being continued into long and 
thin processes, connected by a most dehcately- 
formed membrane or skin, capable, from its thin- 
ness, of being contracted at pleasure into innume- 
rable wrinkles, so as to lie in a small space when 
the animal is at rest, and to be stretched to a very 
wide extent for occasional flight. 
Should a speculative philosopher, not aware of 
the anatomical impossibility of success, attempt, 
by means of light machinery, to exercise the 
power of flight, he could not hit on a more plau- 
sible idea than that of copying the structure de- 
scribed. Accordingly a celebrated author has 
most justly and judiciously represented a sage 
theorist busied in imitating, for this purpose, 
the folding continuity of the wing of a Bat." 
The species of this extraordinary genus are nu- 
merous, and may be divided into the tailed and the 
tailless Bats, 
