Marvels of the Universe 915 
have bodies as large as a rat. But the Fruit-eating Bats, which form a sub-order very distinct from 
the Insect-eating section, attain to a much greater size. A photograph of what is perhaps the 
largest known Bat is here given, the specimens in question being exhibited in the Natural History 
Museum at Munich. The species to which this Bat belongs is said from time to time to produce 
examples measuring as much as five feet right across the expanded wings. The examples which I 
have photographed at Munich are not so big as this, perhaps only three feet or a little over, but 
they are of the same kind, the well-known Kalong, or Fruit Bat, of Java, Sumatra and the Malay 
Peninsula. These huge Fruit Bats are a russet-brown in the colour of their fur, and the leathery 
wings are blackish-brown. They emit a strong musky odour. Their chief food consists of bananas, 
mangoes, and other fruits sufficiently soft in their outer covering for the Bat with its strong teeth 
to penetrate through the rind to the pulp. They are noisy beasts, especially at night-time, when 
they quarrel a great deal over their feasting. There is something very dislikable about Fruit- 
eating Bats. None of them are good to eat (except to hungry savages), and most of them 
are haunted by a repellent musky odour, alive and dead. Some genera in Africa and elsewhere 
develop heads of such monstrous ugliness that no sprite or goblin more frightful in appearance has 
ever been conceived by the artist of a fairy-tale book. When seen flying against an evening sky 
(for they are mainly nocturnal in their habits, though more wide-awake in the day-time than Insect- 
eating Bats), they answer well to the description applied to them by Arabs of ‘‘ The Devil’s Birds.” 
Like most other Bats, their fur is tenanted by large, disgusting-looking lice ; they are, as I have 
said, so noisy as to be a perfect nuisance (I well remember sleepless nights and disturbed days passed 
Photo by] [W. Saville Kent. 
THE ARBORESCENT GRASS-TREE. 
The finest specimen in Western Australia. To the right hand is shown a single flower-spike. Another name given to the 
Grass-tree is the ‘ Black Boy,’’ on account of their supposed resemblance (at a distance) to a bent and wizened native with a 
shock head of hair. 
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