oyage
Round the World," in vol. iii. of Hawkesworth's quartos, detailing the
discoveries of June, July, and August 1770--that is close upon a
century ago. What progress has the world made since that period! We do
not require long periods of ages to alter, to adapt, to develop the
customs and knowledge of man. At p. 156 we get an account of a large
bat. On the 23d June 1770 Cook says:--"This day almost everybody had
seen the animal which the pigeon-shooters had brought an account of the
day before; and one of the seamen, who had been rambling in the woods,
told us, at his return, that he verily believed he had seen the devil.
We naturally inquired in what form he had appeared, and his answer was
in so singular a style that I shall set down his own words. 'He was,'
says John, 'as large as a one-gallon keg, and very like it; he had horns
and wings, yet he crept so slowly through the grass, that if I had not
been _afeared_ I might have touched him.' This formidable apparition we
afterwards discovered to have been a bat, and the bats here must be
acknowledged to have a frightful appearance, for they are nearly black,
and full as large as a partridge; they have indeed no horns, but the
fancy of a man who thought he saw the devil might easily supply that
defect."

* * * * *

Having seen some of the very curious fox-bats alive, and given some
condensed information about them in Dr Hamilton's series of volumes
called "Excelsior," the writer may extract the account, with some slight
additions, especially as the article is illustrated with a truly
admirable figure of a fox-bat, from a living specimen by Mr Wolf. In Sir
Emerson Tennent's "Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon," p. 14, Mr
Wolf has represented a whole colony of the "flying-foxes," as they are
called.

[Illustration: Flying Fox. (Pteropus ruficollis.)]

FOX-BATS (_Pteropus_).

In this country that bat is deemed a large one whose wings, when
measured from tip to tip, exceed twelve inches, or whose body is above
that of a small mouse in bulk. In some parts of the world, however,
there are members of this well-marked family, the wings of which, when
stretched and measured from one extremity to the other, are five feet
and upwards in extent, and their bodies large in proportion. These are
the fox-bats, a pair of which were lately procured for the Zoological
Gardens. It is from one of this pair that the very characteristic figure