CLASS I. MAMMALIA: 
ORDER 
3. CHEIROPTERA. 
125 
BATS OF EGYPT. 
one has only to throw a deep Rembrandt shade over a piece of canvas, and show a bat's wing 
partly displayed from a cave, in order to give an infernal air to it, and make it, with very little 
painting, a good poetical representation of the gates of hell. It is easy to see how a race which 
is linked with such associations, should have had but a scanty measure of justice meted out to it 
by the half-superstitious naturalists of the Middle Ages ; and a remnant of the same superstition 
is, no doubt, the cause of much of the horror which is still connected with some of the larger spe- 
cies of warm countries. 
When we come to study the family of bats, however, in the light of natural history, not only 
does the traditional horror to which we have alluded vanish, but in their structure and habits we 
find much that is exceedingly curious. Their organs of sense are variously developed. The ears 
are in general large, and in some of the species they have a duplicature or second concha, as if 
there were one ear within the other. It is hence presumed that the sense of hearing is acute ; 
and it may be that those which have the duplicature to the ears, have thus the means of closing 
up the auditory passao-e, so that they may not be disturbed in their repose dni-ing the day. 
The eyes are very small, and deeply imbedded, something like those of moles ; and though 
they must have the power of vision, it does not appear that they are essential to the animal in 
finding its w^ay, even when it is intricate. Spallanzani suspended willow rods in a room in 
which he turned loose some bats which he had blinded ; but though he frequently shifted these, 
so as to make the passage between them as varied and as intricate as possible, these creatures 
never struck against one of them, though they kept flying about in all directions. The same ex- 
periments have been made by others, and with a like result. The question has hence been raised 
as to the means by which bats contrive to avoid obstacles, and the same inquiry may be extended 
