154 
PASSTON'AL ZOOLOGYe 
crust in the imagination of credulous mortals the myths more or 
less fabulous of the hypogriff, the griffin, the dragon, the chim- 
era ; that this, in one word, has served as a model for all those 
birds with four feet and with jaws to which the ancient world was 
in the habit of confiding the guardianship of its treasures. 
The Roc of the Arab Legend is not an eagle but a true bat. A 
bird wdiich is but bird, ho\Y big soever, having only two feet and 
feathery, could never succeed in inspiring the same terror as the 
most innocent bat. The physical structure of a hobgoblin impe- 
riously requires the combination of claws, wings, and jaws. 
The devil of the Catholic, apostolic, and Roman legend — the 
Christian devil, who has done so large a stockjobbing business in 
souls, and who has caused so many choice domains to be be- 
queathed to the priests — the Christian devil is himself only a very 
ingenious counterfeit of the bat, on whose forehead they have 
glued the two horns of the ancient satyr, to conceal the theft. 
The devil which traverses the curtain of the opera in the third 
act of Robert, has membranous wings and toes adorned with nails 
like a real bat. All the invocations of sorcerers in the infernal 
dramas commence by causing to appear on the scene frightful bats 
wdiich open their wings to music. All the figures of the chief per- 
sonages of Callot’s mystery, the temptation of St. Anthony, are 
copied from originals which may be admired in a cabinet of nat- 
ural history in the gallery of the family pictures of the Bat. 
The tradition of the vampire who comes forth from his tomb by 
night to suck the blood of young girls, is a tradition of the bat. 
The three-horned cap of the Jesuits, the cagoule of the monks, 
are pieces of the uniform of the bat. 
I know all the crimes of the bat, and I pardon them : a fault 
confessed is half pardoned. 
I pardon them from this religious motive, that the fear of death 
is one of the fatal conditions of existence in the purgatorial socie- 
ties, and that God must preserve a ratio betw^een the terror of 
death and the miseries of life. The superstition as well as the evil 
had its necessity. 
But even as the first rays of the Sun, pivot of light and of lo^^e, 
chase from the revivified atmosphere the spirits of darkness, the 
