The Bat . 
11 
Drayton writes— 
“ What sports have we whereon our minds to set, 
Our dog, our parrot, or our marmoset?” 
( England's Heroical Epistles.') 
Tubal sticks a dagger into his friend Shylock by telling 
him of a ring that a sailor had obtained from Jessica in 
exchange for a monkey:— 
“ Shylock . Out upon her! Thou torturest me, Tubal: it was my 
turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor: I would not have 
given it for a wilderness of monkeys.” (Merchant of Venice, iii. 1,125.) 
A monkey was also a common appendage of the domestic 
fool, or jester, and an appropriate companion in his 
gambols. 
The wing-handed animal, the Bat, known also as the 
rere-monse, or still piore appropriately as the ^ ^ 
flitter-mouse, was a great puzzle to our fore¬ 
fathers. It was classed by them as avis , non avis , “ bird 
and not bird.” Nor was it until the close of the seven¬ 
teenth century that it was placed with viviparous animals. 
It shared with the owl and the raven the reputation of 
foreboding misery and death to the inmates of the house 
where it entered, and was classed with these birds by 
Spenser: — 
“ The ill-faste owle, death’s dreadfull messengere; 
The hoars night-raven, trump of dolefull drere; 
The lether-winged bat, dayes enimy; 
The ruefull strich, still waiting on the here.” 
(Faerie Queene, ii., xii., 36.) 
Ben Jonson speaks of— 
“ The giddy flitter-mice with leather wings ! ” 
(The Sad Shepherd , ii. 2.) 
And again— 
“ Once a bat, and ever a bat! a rere-mouse, 
And bird of twilight.” 
(The New Inn, iii. 1.) 
