JUPITER FLU VI US. 
79 
ally with the monkeys. When the pitiless rain is pouring 
hour after hour, and the water is streaming down the 
trees, and the branches are all nasty and slimy, and every 
shake brings down a redoubled shower from the leaves, I 
wonder where the poor monkeys are and what they are 
doing. Are they all huddled together, with their heads 
buried in each other’s bosoms, and the water spouting 
from their long tails ? 
Many birds, too, lay their eggs during the first and 
heaviest month of rain, and sit in open nests day and 
night, pelted with drops almost as big as their heads. 
It is true that the feathers of birds, oily and smooth 
and arranged one over another like tiles, with an under- 
layer of soft, warm down, form a costume for all weather, 
to which the art of man has never been able to make 
any approach ; and the combination of long hair and 
short wool which forms the fur of many beasts is nearly 
as good ; but a bird or beast can be wet to the skin 
when the station doctor is registering ten inches in 
twenty-four hours. 
And what of the bats, Flying Foxes for instance, 
which hang with their feet up and their heads down ? 
The fur of bats, we know, is different from that of all 
