ndia," by Mrs Colin Mackenzie, vol. ii., p. 126.

[22] Published by James Nisbet & Co., in 1863, 1864.

BATS.

A highly curious, if not the strangest, order of the class are these
flying creatures called bats. It is evident from Noel Paton's fairy
pictures that he has closely studied their often fantastic faces. The
writer could commend to his attention an African bat, lately figured by
his friend Mr Murray.[23] Its enormous head, or rather muzzle, compared
with its other parts, gives it an outrageously hideous look. In the late
excellent Dr Horsfield's work on the animals of Java, there are some
engravings of bats by Mr Taylor, who acquired among engravers the title
of "Bat Taylor," so wonderfully has he rendered the exquisite pileage or
fur of these creatures. It is wonderful how numerous the researches of
naturalists, such as Mr Tomes, of Welford, near Stratford, have shown
the order _Cheiroptera_ to be in genera and species. Their profiles and
full faces, even in outline, are often most bizarre and strange. Their
interfemoral membranes, we may add, are actual "unreticulated" nets,
with which they catch and detain flies as they skim through the air.
They pick these out of this bag with their mouths, and "make no bones"
of any prey, so sharp and pointed are their pretty insectivorous teeth.
Their flying membranes, stretched on the elongated finger-bones of their
fore-legs, are wonderful adaptations of Divine wisdom, a capital subject
for the natural theologian to select.

Our poet-laureate must be a close observer of natural history. In his
"In Memoriam," xciv., he distinctly alludes to some very curious West
African bats first described by the late amiable Edward T. Bennett, long
the much-valued secretary of the Zoological Society. These bats are
closely related to the fox bats, and form a genus which is named, from
their shoulder and breast appendages, _Epomophorus_:--

"Bats went round in fragrant skies,
And wheel'd or lit the filmy shapes
That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes,
And woolly breasts and beaded eyes."

The species Mr Bennett named _E. Whitei_, after the good Rev. Gilbert
White, that well-known worthy who wrote "The Natural History of
Selborne," wherein are many notices of bats.

CAPTAIN COOK'S SAILOR AND HIS DESCRIPTION OF A FOX-BAT.

It is curious, now that Australia is almost as civilised, and in parts
nearly as populous, as much of Europe, to read "Lieutenant Cook's V