BAT AND beau: FALLEN DYNASTIES. 
168 
great weight. I must teach it to all who are ignorant, that the 
infancy of globes is the good time for the bats, as the infancy of 
man is the good time for the hobgoblins and baby -eaters. 
The bat occupies in the scale of the animality of a world a de- 
gree so much the higher, as this world is nearer to its first devel- 
opment of animal life. 
In the world which preceded the present, it reigned ; antedi- 
luvian history even reports it as then the most complete form of 
animality. From the high rank which it occupied in those remote 
times, the bat has still preserved one habit, that of wearing its 
udder at the same place as the sphinx. 
It seems then to be proved that in the fine days of this creation 
No. 2 (before the last), the domain of air belonged in all sovereign- 
ty to two or three gigantic species of bats — air-ships, whose mem- 
branous sails measured from eleven to fourteen yards in width ; and 
these bats of large calibre, which our modern savants call pterodac- 
tyles, so as not to repeat the word clieiropteria, which means pre- 
cisely the same thing, divided with the bear the benefits of an 
unrestrained tyranny. 
I may even assert that among these hairy birds, these hideous 
vampires, there were some that made no difficulty of draining a 
poor megatherium or a poor dinotherium, asleep, of some five 
hundred gallons of blood. 
If we may believe our sailors’ reports, the habit of sucking blood 
from people during their sleep, has been carefully transmitted 
from the ancient pterodactyles to the modern cheiropteria. 
I am no apologist of tyrants or of vampires, but I am indulgent 
toward fallen powers. I do not require of those who have lost 
their all in a revolution to be affectionately disposed toward the 
new order of things. In all epochs and on all globes, the pretend- 
ers, that is to say, the fallen powers (the bears and the bats), have 
given their hands to the obscurants — to speak definitely, to the 
Jesuits; in all times the pretenders and priests have coalesced to 
prevent progress. The interest of the fallen in this coalition is 
very clear ; before impressing on the car a retrograde motion, we 
must begin by forcing it to stop. 
I well know that it is the bat which has most contributed to en- 
