EVERY one knows a Bat when he sees it, but few stop to think of all that is interesting in its structure, or to ask these merry little companions of their summer-evening walks, what relatives they have in other climes; yet such an inquiry would well repay the trouble, so we will sit down together by the fireside and discuss the qualities and history of these our absent friends. We may be quite sure that there are none abroad now to hear us, since they quietly dream away all the cold weather, perhaps amongst the bells in the church-tower, indifferent to all the varied tales the bells have told, and not even roused by the merry peal of a wedding from their winter slumbers; or, perhaps they have been hiding in some old tree or lonely cavern, with no other music than the wind and rain: whatever haunt they have chosen, they are now sleeping, hung up by their hind legs, with their wings folded closely round

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them, earning the epithet of "drowsy flittermice," given them by one of the old dramatists. Peace and quiet be with them, and may no dreams, except memories of balmy summer evenings, and aldermanic feastings on well-fattened moths, disturb their slumbers!

Did you ever see a Bat near enough to examine the place on which its wings are formed? The long bones that the skin is stretched upon, are in reality the fingers. The expanded membrane extends over these to the hind legs, and from thence even to the tail. The wing is thus spread on the hand like the covering of an umbrella on its rays, and can in a similar manner be folded up when at rest. In the bird, the expanded surface necessary for flight is formed by the stiff feathers, and the bones are only sufficiently developed to give a fixed place for their insertion-but a Bat has no feathers, hence this beautiful adaptation of its skin to the same purpose, though on a different plan. This membranous expansion has also another use, besides that of flight; it possesses the sense of touch in an eminent degree, far more so than our fingers; for by its aid the Bat can even tell the proximity of any object, and thus it flies in the dark fearlessly along, chasing its insect prey amongst the tangled boughs of the trees-for all our English Bats live upon moths and night-flying insects. "All our English Bats!" I can fancy some of my readers exclaiming; " is there more than one native kind?" There are at least fifteen species found in the island; many of them are however rare, and confined to the southern counties; the largest are more than a foot across, from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other: though some are rather forbidding in their aspect, they are all harmless "" 'merry wanderers of the night." But we are going on too quickly, and we must discuss our subject in order. Throughout the group of Bats there is a great tendency to development of folds of skin, probably in part for the same purpose of increasing the sense or touch which has been before noticed in the wings; and this is made use of in their classification: thus, though the first division of Bats is into the two groups of Insectivorous and Frugivorous, the Insectivorous section is again classed into those which possess a fold of skin appended as an ornament to the nose, and secondly, those without this peculiar mark of beauty.And as we might fancy some savage tribe would allow their chief to have a more handsomely carved nose-ring than his

subjects, so the first in order are those Bats in whom the nose-bag is complicated and adorned with secondary folds. There are two English species in this first rank, known by the name of Horse-shoe Bats, because the nasal ornament bears some resemblance to a horse-shoe, a resemblance which no doubt in superstitious days would have gained them a place in the evil army of "witches, warlocks, and all lang-nebbit things." Their haunts too are suspicious. As they love dark and gloomy caverns, little is known of their habits: I have seen them at even-tide in summer searching for prey near the mouth of the cave in which they lived by day, but they seemed not to wander far from home. In the Nyctorius, an African family belonging to the same group, the development of skin answers a different purpose, for by the means of an aperture under the cheek the animal is able to distend itself with air, so as to make what was before a Bat into a kind of impromptu balloon; the use of this may be, perhaps, to lessen the specific gravity of the body, and thus increase its buoyancy. But we must pass from this group to those with a simple nose-bag only, and these are mainly inhabitants of the New World, as if they were there the representatives of the more elaborate noses of the Old. Amongst these is the Bat which forms the subject of the present sketch-the Spectre Bat; and amongst them are all the Vampyres, of which so many stories, half truth half fiction, have been told. Though they have never been known to cause the death of any being larger than a common fowl, yet they are of a leech-like character, and live on blood; their teeth, sharp and pointed, are admirably fitted for skin, and it is not wise to sleep with your great toes uncovered in climes which they inhabit ; nor are they a bit less fond of attacking the shoulders of your horse. The Desmodes Spectrum is about the size of a magpie. Let us pass from these bloodthirsty beings, to a more simple and rural group, the group to which all the remaining English Bats belong. One of the finest native kinds is the Great Bat or Noctule; he is more than a foot in breadth, from the tip of one wing to that of the other, and must be a favourite with all naturalists as being associated with the name of Gilbert White of Selborne, who was amongst the first to describe it as found in Britain. To me it has other memories also connected with it, for it always brings to my mind one of the haunts of my earlier days, or rather nights

a fertile meadow near a pleasant village in the south of Devon, quiet, shut in by trees, large umbrageous elms, except on the one side, where was plainly seen the tower of the village church. Here in the summer evenings these Bats were always to be seen, flying up and down, usually rather above the tops of the lofty trees, making me wonder, as an Entomologist, what insects they could get to eat at such a height in the air. This Bat is not scarce in marshy ground in the southern counties of England; and where one is met with there are usually plenty more, as it is more social than many of its congeners. But, to turn to the smaller and more frequent species which flit up and down every shady lane, flying along the hedge-tops, sentinel-like, backwards and forwards over the same path, fluttering by like some great moth, yet gracefully and swiftly enough, now flitting in and out amongst the branches of an overhanging tree, now sweeping down amongst the grass intent on finding a supper on that dainty looking moth which is hovering there. Two of these are common throughout England, the Pipistrel and the Long-eared Bat; these little flying mice abide in hollow trees or under the eaves of houses in the day, but are active enough at supper-time; when their meal is caught they cannot eat it as they fly, for they require always to remove the wings of the insect first, which they reject as uneatable. In order to pluck their game, they often retire to some settled spot, and thus their abode may be discovered by the wings of moths around it, just as the bones of passing pilgrims were found around the caves of giants in those days of old when such beings were to be met with. This is at least the case with a pretty dark-coloured Bat (Daubenton's), not rare in the south-west parts of England. An old summer-house, which was the daily abode of several of this species, used at one time to give me the earliest information of what moths were on the wing. In the spring the floor was strewed with remains of sober quakers; then later in the season the yellow underwings, and even of the large female oak-eggar moth, a prey not very much smaller in size than the Bat itself.

It is curious to see the mode in which Bats walk, using their hind feet much as other animals, but mainly dragging themselves onward by the claw affixed to their anterior extremity, and answering to our thumb. On a rough surface they are thus able to get along quickly enough, though it

must be confessed with rather a shuffling gait, but on a smooth ground they are helpless, and cannot rise. Their element is the air; the females even carry their young at the breast in their nocturnal rambles, and this does not seem to impede their progress in any great degree. Perhaps the Pipistrel is the very commonest of our native Bats, and it is certainly the most hardy. In the South sometimes in a mild winter it can scarcely be said to hybernate; it is often recorded in my notes as being active in December and even January, but this is in South Devon, where I have frequently seen the tortoiseshell butterfly on the wing upon Christmas-day. One sunny November, near London, a Bat, perhaps of this kind, used to come out, and fly up and down in my garden regularly for an hour or two at noon, hawking for the gnats which formed merry dances underneath the boughs of the apple-trees. This was certainly a curious departure from their usual manners and customs, as he did it voluntarily and of his own free-will; but a Bat if disturbed in the day time cannot always make up his mind to return at once to his rest again. The long-eared Bat, whose name well denotes its chief peculiarity, is nearly as frequent as the other, and, like it, distributed over the greater part of the island; it is nearly, though not quite as hardy; I have seen it in November.

With this must be ended this brief account of our English Bats. Closely allied to this section are the Noctilios of tropical countries, distinguished by the hind-foot being much more free than in the last; these must be here passed over, but a few words must be said upon the fruit-eating Bats, or Pleropida, as they are called by naturalists. The most remarkable of these is the Kalong of Java, five feet across the wings, almost like a flying fox. How curious a long steady line of these immense creatures must seem, steadily directing their flight, one after another, to some richly laden fruit-tree! No wonder they soon lighten its burden-no wonder that they often commit considerable ravages; these are said to be eaten as dainties in the countries where they occur, and to taste like game; probably they would hardly suit our taste, and taking the mischief they do into account, we may rather rejoice that they are not inhabitants of English larders, either alive or dead.Such are the various tribes of Bats, curious as showing how an All-wise and All-powerful Being can adapt the limbs of