American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1875-10-16

and defiance which hunger could not sub
due nor food appease. So at least 1t
seemed, and l think any but a boy natu-
ralist would have yielded to the tempta-
ton to fling the spiteful creature out of
the window. Perhaps, too, a certain OBJ
stinacy made me unwilling to SO easily
relinquish the newly-formed hope of do
mesticating a bat. At any rate another
fly was presented, and, like the former,
dropped the moment my fingers touched
the head of the bat. With third waited
until the bat seemed to be actually swal-
lowing, and unable to either discontinue
that process or open its mouth to any ex-
tent.
6 Its rage and perplexity were comical
to behold, and, when the fly was really
down, it seemed to almost burst with the
effort to express its indignation But this
did not prevent it from falling into the
same trap again; and, to make long
story short, it finally learned by experience
that, while chewing and swallowing were
more or less interrupted by swapping at
me, both operations were quite compatible
with my gentle stroking of its head. And
even a bat has brains enough to see the
foolishness of losing a dinner in order to
resent an unsolicited kindness.
:" In a few days the bat would take flies
from my fingers; although, either from
eagerness or because blinded by the light,
it too often nipp Cd me sharply in its efforts
to seize the victim.
Its voracity was almost incredible
For several weeks it devoured at least fifty
house-t1ies in day Git was vacation, and
my playmates had to assist mel, and once
disposed of eighty between daybreak and
sunset.
"This bat 1 kept for more than two
months. 1t would shuttle across the table
when | entered the room, and lift up its
head for the expected fly. When travelling
it was carried in my breast pocket.
''In the fall it died, either from overeat-
ing or lack of exercise, for dared not let
it out Of doors, and it was so apt to injure
itself in the rooms that seldom allowed
it to fly.
81 should add that it drank frequently
and greedily from the tip of cancels
hair pencil.
1t must be admitted" the writer says,
" that most bats are uncanny' in their as
pect and unfriendly in disposition, while
the legends of blood thirsty vampires have
only too much foundation in fact. But it
is only fair to them (the bat family to adj
NIT that the number of species which thus
injure men and the larger animals is very
small and that, while all of our own bats
and most of those of other lands are
fierce devourers of insects, and use their
sharp teeth for defense against their cap
tors, there are-pany kinds, especially the
larger (RousA1 les, etc. }, which live almost
wholly upon fruits, and are, moreover,
quite good eating themselves. So there
should be made distinction between
them as between the venomous and the
harmless serpents and the more and the
less poisonous spiders.
perhaps one element of distruSt of the
bat family arises from their apparent nom
to either of the common ami
NAL types. The bat seems to be either q
bird with hair and teeth, bringing forth
its young alive, or a mammal with wings
and the general aspect and habit of bird.
Add to these exceptional features that
their attitude, when at rest, is always head
and that their legs are so
turned outward as to bring their knees be-
hind instead of in front, and we may al
most pardon the common dislike of the
whole family of bats.
1--WE may as we'll state at once that a
bat is really a mammal-that is, it agrees
with moles. rats, sheep, horses, cats,
and men in bringing forth its
young alive, and nursing them by milk
in having red blood-corpuscles, which
contain no nucleus; in being clothed with
hair, and in possessing a corpus cdtLOsuna-
that is, band of fibers connecting the two
cerebral hemispheres.
There are other anatomical features
which link the bats closely with the moles
and shrews and hed2e-hogs. Indeed, the
bat might be described as Il flying mole,
Or the mole as burrowing bat.
Twenty years ago one of these phrases
might have been as acceptable as the
other; for they would have implied only
an ideal connection between the forms.
But now, when the idea of an actual evo-
luton or derivation of widely Indifferent
forms from one another, or from common
stocks, is rapidly becoming the funda-
mental postulate of all biological research,
we are bound to inquire whether one mode
Of expression is not much more likely to
be true than the other"