[Contents]CHAPTER IVBATS“Which of you three can tell me what bats feed upon?” asked Uncle Paul the next day.At this question Emile put on his thinking-cap, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead; but no ideas came. Nor were Jules and Louis any prompter with an answer.“Nobody knows? Well, then, so much the better, for you will have the satisfaction of finding it out for yourselves, from the shape of the teeth. The incisors, small and weak, which you see on an enlarged scale in this picture of a bat’s set of teeth—do they look as if they were made for gnawing vegetable substances, after the manner of rats and rabbits? Could they cut any such tough fodder?”“Certainly not,” replied Jules; “they are too weak to be of much use. And then it seems to me those two sharp, curved fangs must belong to a flesh-eating animal.”“The long, pointed canines do indicate as much, but the molars show it perhaps still more plainly. With their strong and sharp indented crowns fitting so well into the sharp-edged depressions of the opposite jaw—are those molars designed to crush grain, to grind, slowly and patiently, fibrous substances?”[25]“No,” said Jules; “they are the teeth of a flesh-eater, not the grist-mill of an herbivorous animal.”“I am sure now,” affirmed Louis, “that the bat lives on prey.”“It is a greedy hunter of flesh and blood,” Emile declared. “The cat’s teeth are not more savage-looking.”Jaws and Teeth of a BatJaws and Teeth of a Bat“All that is quite correct,” said Uncle Paul. “The teeth have taught you the chief thing about the animal’s habits. Yes, the bat is a hunter, an eater of live prey, a little ogre always demanding fresh meat. It only remains to find out the kind of game it likes. Evidently the size of the prey must suit the size of the hunter. A bat’s head is no bigger than a largehazelnut. It is true the mouth is split from ear to ear and can, when wide open, swallow mouthfuls larger than the smallness of the animal would lead one to suppose. Nevertheless the bat can attack only small creatures. What can it be that it goes chasing through the air when, after sunset, it flies hither and thither unceasingly?”“Gnats, perhaps, and night-moths,” Jules suggested.“Exactly. Those are its prey. The bat lives on insects exclusively. All are food for its maw: hard-winged beetles, slender mosquitoes, plump moths, flying insects of all sorts; in fact, all the little winged foes of our cereals, vines, fruit-trees, woolen stuffs[26]—all those creatures of the air that come in the evening, attracted by our lighted rooms, and singe their wings in the flames of our lamps. Who would undertake to say how many insects bats destroy when they fly around a house? The game is so small, and the hunter is so hungry.“Notice what happens on a calm summer evening. Lured abroad by the balmy atmosphere of the twilight hours, a host of insects leave their lurking-places and come forth, guests at life’s garden party, to sport together in the air, hunt for food, and mate with one another. It is the hour when the sphinx-moths fly abruptly from flower to flower and thrust their long probosces into the depths of the corollas, where honey is stored; the hour when the mosquito, thirsting for human blood, sounds its war-cry in our ears and selects our tenderest spot to stab with its poisoned lancet; the hour when the June-bug leaves the shelter of the leaf, spreads its buzzing wings, and goes humming through the air in quest of its fellows. The gnats dance in joyous swarms which the slightest breath of wind disperses like a column of smoke; butterflies and moths, in wedding-garments, their wings powdered with silvery dust and their antennæ spread out like plumes, join in the frolic or seek places in which to deposit their eggs; the wood-borer comes forth from its hidden retreat under the bark of the elm; the weevil breaks its cell hollowed out in a grain of wheat; the plume-moths rise in clouds from the granaries and fly toward the fields of ripe cereals; other moths explore here the[27]grape-vines, there the pear-trees, apple-trees, cherry-trees, busily seeking food and shelter for their evil progeny.A Bat in FlightA Bat in Flight“But in the midst of these festive assemblies suddenly there comes a killjoy. It is the bat, which flies hither and thither, up and down, appearing and disappearing, darting its head out this side and that, and each time snapping up an insect on the wing, crushing and swallowing it immediately. The hunting is good; gnats, beetles, and moths abound; and every now and then a little cry of joy announces the capture of a plump June-bug. As long as the fading twilight permits, the eager hunter thus pursues its work of extermination. Satisfied at last, the bat flies back to its somber and quiet retreat. The next evening and all through the summer the hunt is resumed, always with the same ardor, always at the expense of insects only.“To give you an idea of the multitude of harmful insects, especially of moths, from which the bat delivers us, I will quote a passage from the celebrated French naturalist Buffon, the most graphic historian of the animal kingdom. But first I must tell you that bats are in the habit of making their homes in old towers, grottoes, and abandoned quarries. There, in great numbers, they pass the daylight[28]hours, hanging motionless from the roof, and thence they sally forth at the approach of darkness. The floor of these retreats becomes covered at last with a deep layer of droppings, from which we can learn the kind of food eaten by bats and judge of the importance of their hunting. Now here is what Buffon has to say of a grotto frequented by these creatures:“Having one day descended into the grottoes of Arci, I was surprised to find there a kind of earth of a singular nature. It formed a bed of blackish matter several feet thick, almost entirely composed of parts of the wings and feet of flies and moths, as if these insects had gathered here in immense numbers, coming together for the express purpose of dying and rotting in company. It was nothing but bats’ dung that had been accumulating for years.”“What a curious kind of soil, made up entirely of the remains of dead insects!” Jules exclaimed.“I will add that sometimes this soil of flies and moths at the bottom of old quarries and caves is abundant enough for the farmer to take account of it and use it as a rich fertilizer. It is called bats’ guano.”“To make such heaps of it, then,” remarked Louis, “bats must destroy insects by millions and millions.”“Five or six dozen flies or moths are hardly enough for a bat’s evening meal; if a few June-bugs should make their appearance, they would be eagerly[29]snapped up. If the band of hunters is a large one, judge of the thousands of harmful insects destroyed in a single season. Next to the birds we have no more valiant helpers than bats; and so I beg you to be friendly to these creatures which, while we are asleep and perhaps dreaming of our rich crops of pears and apples, peaches and grapes and grain, proceed with their silent warfare against the enemies of our harvests, and every evening destroy by myriads moths, mosquitoes, beetles, bugs—in short, the greater part of the insect throng that always threatens us with starvation if we do not keep vigilant watch.”“I see now that the bat does us a good turn,” Emile admitted. “All the same, it is frightfully ugly; and, besides, they say if it touches you it will give you the itch.”“There are any number of other sayings about it that are just as foolish, my boy. One is that the bat pricks with its pointed teeth the she-goat’s udders so as to suck her blood and milk; another is that it gnaws the sausages and bacon hung under the chimney mantel; also, that its sudden entrance into a house means misfortune. I have heard persons cry out because a bat had accidentally grazed them with the tip of its wing; and I have seen others pale with terror because they had found one of the innocent creatures fastened by a claw to their bed curtains.“Here, as in many other things, my dear children, you must take into account the folly of mankind,[30]which is more given to error than to truth. If you were old enough to understand me, I should add that wherever I find a general agreement that a thing is black I think it well to look into the matter and find out whether, on the contrary, it may not be white. We are so stuffed with false notions that very often the exact opposite of the common belief is the real truth. Do you ask for examples? There are plenty of them.“The sun, we generally say, according to all appearances revolves from east to west around the stationary earth. No, says science, no, it is the earth, on the contrary, that rotates from west to east before the stationary sun. The stars, we say again, are small bright points, little lamps in the arch of the firmament. No, answers science, the stars are not tiny sparks; they are enormous bodies which compare in light and size to the sun itself, a million and a half times as large as the earth. The bat, it is commonly asserted, is a harmful, hideous, venomous creature of ill omen that must be crushed without mercy under the heel. No, affirms science, a thousand times no; the bat is an inoffensive creature that, instead of doing us harm and bringing misfortune, renders us an immense service by protecting the good things of the earth from their countless destroyers.“No, we should not vent our hatred upon it and pitilessly kill it; on the contrary, we should like and respect it as one of our best helpers. The poor creature does not deserve the bad reputation that[31]ignorance has given it. Its touch does not communicate either lice or the itch; its teeth do not pierce the goat’s udders or attack our stores of bacon; its chance entrance into a room is no more to be dreaded than a butterfly’s. For my part I should like to have it visit my bedroom often at night, for then I should soon be rid of the mosquitoes that torment me. All things considered, we have nothing, absolutely nothing to reproach it with, and we are indebted to it for very valuable services. That is the answer of science to ignorant prejudice. Henceforth, then, crush the bat under your heel if you dare.”“I will take good care,” said Louis, “never to do such a thing now that I know what an army of enemies we are guarded against by the bat.”“But what a pity,” Jules remarked, “that it is such a hideous creature!”“Hideous?” his uncle repeated. “That is a slander which I hope to make you take back.”“Surely you can’t deny that the bat is horribly ugly,” persisted the boy.“Perhaps I can.”“I should like to know,” said Emile, “how you can make out that the frightful shape of the creature is beautiful.”“To discuss ugliness and beauty with you, my children,” replied Uncle Paul, “is not an undertaking that I should care to enter upon. To follow me in such a discussion you would need a maturity of mind that does not go with your years. Even if you[32]were grown up, it might still be impossible for us to come to an agreement, inasmuch as it is not with the bodily eyes that ugliness and beauty should be judged, but with the eyes of reason ripened by reflection and study and free from the trammels of first impressions, which are generally erroneous. Also, how few possess that intellectual clearness of vision that remains untroubled by prematurely conceived opinions and can thus contemplate things in all the clarity of truth! Trusting the testimony of our eyes and yielding to daily habit, we call beautiful the creatures whose general structure shows a certain conformity with that of the animals most familiar to us and unthinkingly accepted as standards for all future judgments. We call ugly those that differ from these accepted models, and if very unlike we call them hideous. Enlightened reason refuses to be hemmed in by the narrow circle of first impressions; it rises above petty prejudices and says to itself: Nothing is ugly that God has made; everything is beautiful, everything is perfect in itself, as everything is the work of the Creator.“An animal’s form should not be judged by its greater or less resemblance to the forms that are already familiar to us and serve us as standards of comparison, but rather by its fitness for the kind of life for which it was created. Where the structure is in perfect harmony with the functions to be performed, there too is beauty. From this higher point of view ugliness no longer exists; or, rather, it exists all too abundantly, but only in the moral world. Intemperance,[33]laziness, stupid pride—all forms of vice, in short—constitute ugliness and hideousness. To tell the truth, I know of none besides.“But I must return to the bat, if not in the hope of making you find it beautiful, at least with the certainty of interesting you in its remarkable structure. I will wager, too, that not one of you knows what a bat is.”“It is a kind of bird,” declared Emile.“It is an old rat that has grown a pair of wings,” Jules ventured to assert.“You are both talking nonsense,” returned their uncle. “That is the way with us all: we speak at random of animals and persons, giving to one our esteem, to another our scorn, without knowing what they are, what they do, what they are good for. You don’t know the first thing about the bat, and yet you overwhelm the poor animal with abuse.“The bat has nothing in common with birds; it has neither beak nor feathers; nor is it a rat that has acquired wings in its old age. It is really a peculiar creature that is born, lives, and dies with wings, without in any way belonging to the bird family. Its body has the size, the fur, and somewhat the shape of a mouse; but its wings are bare.“The most highly organized animals have as a distinctive mark teats or udders, which furnish milk, the first food of their young. These animals do not feed their young family from the beak, as birds do; they do not abandon their offspring to all the hazards of good or ill fortune, careless of their[34]future, as do the stupid races of reptiles and fish. The females rear their young with maternal care, feeding them from time to time with milk from their udders. All the various species that suckle their young, all that are provided with udders, are classed together by men of learning and called mammals, from the Latinmamma, a breast or teat. I will add that in the great majority of instances these animals have the body covered with fur or hair, and not with feathers or scales. Feathers belong to birds, scales to reptiles and fishes. As examples of mammals you will immediately think of our domestic animals, the dog, the cat, the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and others.”“I have often noticed,” said Emile, “how carefully the cat raises her family. While the kittens press her teats with their little pink paws to make the milk flow faster, the old cat washes them with her tongue and shows her happiness by her soft purring.”“Well, then,” resumed Uncle Paul, “the bat is a mammal just as much as is the cat, and like that of the cat its body is protected from the cold by fur, and the female has teats for nursing her little ones. The number of teats varies widely in the different kinds of animals, being greater in the species that have many young at a birth, and less in the others; which is as it should be, in order that the nurslings may all be suckled at the same time. The bat has only two, situated on the breast and not under the stomach. The female bears only a single young one[35]at a time. Emile rightly admires the love of the cat for her kittens; yet the bat is a still tenderer mother. When in the evening she goes out in search of food, instead of leaving her nursling in some hole in the wall after suckling it, she carries it with her, clinging to her breast; and it is while weighted with this load that she chases the nimble moths on the wing. Doubtless the pursuit of prey is thus rendered less fruitful and more difficult; but no matter, the loving mother prefers not to abandon her feeble charge, and allows it to continue peacefully sucking during the evolutions of the hunt. With the deepening darkness the bat regains its retreat, suspends itself from the roof by a toe-nail, and holds its nursling by wrapping it in her wings.”“That is not so bad a way to behave,” admitted Jules. “I begin to find the bat less ugly than I thought.”“That is what I just told you,” returned his uncle. “Ugliness is begotten of ignorance; it diminishes as knowledge increases. But let us continue our theme.”[36]
[Contents]CHAPTER IVBATS“Which of you three can tell me what bats feed upon?” asked Uncle Paul the next day.At this question Emile put on his thinking-cap, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead; but no ideas came. Nor were Jules and Louis any prompter with an answer.“Nobody knows? Well, then, so much the better, for you will have the satisfaction of finding it out for yourselves, from the shape of the teeth. The incisors, small and weak, which you see on an enlarged scale in this picture of a bat’s set of teeth—do they look as if they were made for gnawing vegetable substances, after the manner of rats and rabbits? Could they cut any such tough fodder?”“Certainly not,” replied Jules; “they are too weak to be of much use. And then it seems to me those two sharp, curved fangs must belong to a flesh-eating animal.”“The long, pointed canines do indicate as much, but the molars show it perhaps still more plainly. With their strong and sharp indented crowns fitting so well into the sharp-edged depressions of the opposite jaw—are those molars designed to crush grain, to grind, slowly and patiently, fibrous substances?”[25]“No,” said Jules; “they are the teeth of a flesh-eater, not the grist-mill of an herbivorous animal.”“I am sure now,” affirmed Louis, “that the bat lives on prey.”“It is a greedy hunter of flesh and blood,” Emile declared. “The cat’s teeth are not more savage-looking.”Jaws and Teeth of a BatJaws and Teeth of a Bat“All that is quite correct,” said Uncle Paul. “The teeth have taught you the chief thing about the animal’s habits. Yes, the bat is a hunter, an eater of live prey, a little ogre always demanding fresh meat. It only remains to find out the kind of game it likes. Evidently the size of the prey must suit the size of the hunter. A bat’s head is no bigger than a largehazelnut. It is true the mouth is split from ear to ear and can, when wide open, swallow mouthfuls larger than the smallness of the animal would lead one to suppose. Nevertheless the bat can attack only small creatures. What can it be that it goes chasing through the air when, after sunset, it flies hither and thither unceasingly?”“Gnats, perhaps, and night-moths,” Jules suggested.“Exactly. Those are its prey. The bat lives on insects exclusively. All are food for its maw: hard-winged beetles, slender mosquitoes, plump moths, flying insects of all sorts; in fact, all the little winged foes of our cereals, vines, fruit-trees, woolen stuffs[26]—all those creatures of the air that come in the evening, attracted by our lighted rooms, and singe their wings in the flames of our lamps. Who would undertake to say how many insects bats destroy when they fly around a house? The game is so small, and the hunter is so hungry.“Notice what happens on a calm summer evening. Lured abroad by the balmy atmosphere of the twilight hours, a host of insects leave their lurking-places and come forth, guests at life’s garden party, to sport together in the air, hunt for food, and mate with one another. It is the hour when the sphinx-moths fly abruptly from flower to flower and thrust their long probosces into the depths of the corollas, where honey is stored; the hour when the mosquito, thirsting for human blood, sounds its war-cry in our ears and selects our tenderest spot to stab with its poisoned lancet; the hour when the June-bug leaves the shelter of the leaf, spreads its buzzing wings, and goes humming through the air in quest of its fellows. The gnats dance in joyous swarms which the slightest breath of wind disperses like a column of smoke; butterflies and moths, in wedding-garments, their wings powdered with silvery dust and their antennæ spread out like plumes, join in the frolic or seek places in which to deposit their eggs; the wood-borer comes forth from its hidden retreat under the bark of the elm; the weevil breaks its cell hollowed out in a grain of wheat; the plume-moths rise in clouds from the granaries and fly toward the fields of ripe cereals; other moths explore here the[27]grape-vines, there the pear-trees, apple-trees, cherry-trees, busily seeking food and shelter for their evil progeny.A Bat in FlightA Bat in Flight“But in the midst of these festive assemblies suddenly there comes a killjoy. It is the bat, which flies hither and thither, up and down, appearing and disappearing, darting its head out this side and that, and each time snapping up an insect on the wing, crushing and swallowing it immediately. The hunting is good; gnats, beetles, and moths abound; and every now and then a little cry of joy announces the capture of a plump June-bug. As long as the fading twilight permits, the eager hunter thus pursues its work of extermination. Satisfied at last, the bat flies back to its somber and quiet retreat. The next evening and all through the summer the hunt is resumed, always with the same ardor, always at the expense of insects only.“To give you an idea of the multitude of harmful insects, especially of moths, from which the bat delivers us, I will quote a passage from the celebrated French naturalist Buffon, the most graphic historian of the animal kingdom. But first I must tell you that bats are in the habit of making their homes in old towers, grottoes, and abandoned quarries. There, in great numbers, they pass the daylight[28]hours, hanging motionless from the roof, and thence they sally forth at the approach of darkness. The floor of these retreats becomes covered at last with a deep layer of droppings, from which we can learn the kind of food eaten by bats and judge of the importance of their hunting. Now here is what Buffon has to say of a grotto frequented by these creatures:“Having one day descended into the grottoes of Arci, I was surprised to find there a kind of earth of a singular nature. It formed a bed of blackish matter several feet thick, almost entirely composed of parts of the wings and feet of flies and moths, as if these insects had gathered here in immense numbers, coming together for the express purpose of dying and rotting in company. It was nothing but bats’ dung that had been accumulating for years.”“What a curious kind of soil, made up entirely of the remains of dead insects!” Jules exclaimed.“I will add that sometimes this soil of flies and moths at the bottom of old quarries and caves is abundant enough for the farmer to take account of it and use it as a rich fertilizer. It is called bats’ guano.”“To make such heaps of it, then,” remarked Louis, “bats must destroy insects by millions and millions.”“Five or six dozen flies or moths are hardly enough for a bat’s evening meal; if a few June-bugs should make their appearance, they would be eagerly[29]snapped up. If the band of hunters is a large one, judge of the thousands of harmful insects destroyed in a single season. Next to the birds we have no more valiant helpers than bats; and so I beg you to be friendly to these creatures which, while we are asleep and perhaps dreaming of our rich crops of pears and apples, peaches and grapes and grain, proceed with their silent warfare against the enemies of our harvests, and every evening destroy by myriads moths, mosquitoes, beetles, bugs—in short, the greater part of the insect throng that always threatens us with starvation if we do not keep vigilant watch.”“I see now that the bat does us a good turn,” Emile admitted. “All the same, it is frightfully ugly; and, besides, they say if it touches you it will give you the itch.”“There are any number of other sayings about it that are just as foolish, my boy. One is that the bat pricks with its pointed teeth the she-goat’s udders so as to suck her blood and milk; another is that it gnaws the sausages and bacon hung under the chimney mantel; also, that its sudden entrance into a house means misfortune. I have heard persons cry out because a bat had accidentally grazed them with the tip of its wing; and I have seen others pale with terror because they had found one of the innocent creatures fastened by a claw to their bed curtains.“Here, as in many other things, my dear children, you must take into account the folly of mankind,[30]which is more given to error than to truth. If you were old enough to understand me, I should add that wherever I find a general agreement that a thing is black I think it well to look into the matter and find out whether, on the contrary, it may not be white. We are so stuffed with false notions that very often the exact opposite of the common belief is the real truth. Do you ask for examples? There are plenty of them.“The sun, we generally say, according to all appearances revolves from east to west around the stationary earth. No, says science, no, it is the earth, on the contrary, that rotates from west to east before the stationary sun. The stars, we say again, are small bright points, little lamps in the arch of the firmament. No, answers science, the stars are not tiny sparks; they are enormous bodies which compare in light and size to the sun itself, a million and a half times as large as the earth. The bat, it is commonly asserted, is a harmful, hideous, venomous creature of ill omen that must be crushed without mercy under the heel. No, affirms science, a thousand times no; the bat is an inoffensive creature that, instead of doing us harm and bringing misfortune, renders us an immense service by protecting the good things of the earth from their countless destroyers.“No, we should not vent our hatred upon it and pitilessly kill it; on the contrary, we should like and respect it as one of our best helpers. The poor creature does not deserve the bad reputation that[31]ignorance has given it. Its touch does not communicate either lice or the itch; its teeth do not pierce the goat’s udders or attack our stores of bacon; its chance entrance into a room is no more to be dreaded than a butterfly’s. For my part I should like to have it visit my bedroom often at night, for then I should soon be rid of the mosquitoes that torment me. All things considered, we have nothing, absolutely nothing to reproach it with, and we are indebted to it for very valuable services. That is the answer of science to ignorant prejudice. Henceforth, then, crush the bat under your heel if you dare.”“I will take good care,” said Louis, “never to do such a thing now that I know what an army of enemies we are guarded against by the bat.”“But what a pity,” Jules remarked, “that it is such a hideous creature!”“Hideous?” his uncle repeated. “That is a slander which I hope to make you take back.”“Surely you can’t deny that the bat is horribly ugly,” persisted the boy.“Perhaps I can.”“I should like to know,” said Emile, “how you can make out that the frightful shape of the creature is beautiful.”“To discuss ugliness and beauty with you, my children,” replied Uncle Paul, “is not an undertaking that I should care to enter upon. To follow me in such a discussion you would need a maturity of mind that does not go with your years. Even if you[32]were grown up, it might still be impossible for us to come to an agreement, inasmuch as it is not with the bodily eyes that ugliness and beauty should be judged, but with the eyes of reason ripened by reflection and study and free from the trammels of first impressions, which are generally erroneous. Also, how few possess that intellectual clearness of vision that remains untroubled by prematurely conceived opinions and can thus contemplate things in all the clarity of truth! Trusting the testimony of our eyes and yielding to daily habit, we call beautiful the creatures whose general structure shows a certain conformity with that of the animals most familiar to us and unthinkingly accepted as standards for all future judgments. We call ugly those that differ from these accepted models, and if very unlike we call them hideous. Enlightened reason refuses to be hemmed in by the narrow circle of first impressions; it rises above petty prejudices and says to itself: Nothing is ugly that God has made; everything is beautiful, everything is perfect in itself, as everything is the work of the Creator.“An animal’s form should not be judged by its greater or less resemblance to the forms that are already familiar to us and serve us as standards of comparison, but rather by its fitness for the kind of life for which it was created. Where the structure is in perfect harmony with the functions to be performed, there too is beauty. From this higher point of view ugliness no longer exists; or, rather, it exists all too abundantly, but only in the moral world. Intemperance,[33]laziness, stupid pride—all forms of vice, in short—constitute ugliness and hideousness. To tell the truth, I know of none besides.“But I must return to the bat, if not in the hope of making you find it beautiful, at least with the certainty of interesting you in its remarkable structure. I will wager, too, that not one of you knows what a bat is.”“It is a kind of bird,” declared Emile.“It is an old rat that has grown a pair of wings,” Jules ventured to assert.“You are both talking nonsense,” returned their uncle. “That is the way with us all: we speak at random of animals and persons, giving to one our esteem, to another our scorn, without knowing what they are, what they do, what they are good for. You don’t know the first thing about the bat, and yet you overwhelm the poor animal with abuse.“The bat has nothing in common with birds; it has neither beak nor feathers; nor is it a rat that has acquired wings in its old age. It is really a peculiar creature that is born, lives, and dies with wings, without in any way belonging to the bird family. Its body has the size, the fur, and somewhat the shape of a mouse; but its wings are bare.“The most highly organized animals have as a distinctive mark teats or udders, which furnish milk, the first food of their young. These animals do not feed their young family from the beak, as birds do; they do not abandon their offspring to all the hazards of good or ill fortune, careless of their[34]future, as do the stupid races of reptiles and fish. The females rear their young with maternal care, feeding them from time to time with milk from their udders. All the various species that suckle their young, all that are provided with udders, are classed together by men of learning and called mammals, from the Latinmamma, a breast or teat. I will add that in the great majority of instances these animals have the body covered with fur or hair, and not with feathers or scales. Feathers belong to birds, scales to reptiles and fishes. As examples of mammals you will immediately think of our domestic animals, the dog, the cat, the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and others.”“I have often noticed,” said Emile, “how carefully the cat raises her family. While the kittens press her teats with their little pink paws to make the milk flow faster, the old cat washes them with her tongue and shows her happiness by her soft purring.”“Well, then,” resumed Uncle Paul, “the bat is a mammal just as much as is the cat, and like that of the cat its body is protected from the cold by fur, and the female has teats for nursing her little ones. The number of teats varies widely in the different kinds of animals, being greater in the species that have many young at a birth, and less in the others; which is as it should be, in order that the nurslings may all be suckled at the same time. The bat has only two, situated on the breast and not under the stomach. The female bears only a single young one[35]at a time. Emile rightly admires the love of the cat for her kittens; yet the bat is a still tenderer mother. When in the evening she goes out in search of food, instead of leaving her nursling in some hole in the wall after suckling it, she carries it with her, clinging to her breast; and it is while weighted with this load that she chases the nimble moths on the wing. Doubtless the pursuit of prey is thus rendered less fruitful and more difficult; but no matter, the loving mother prefers not to abandon her feeble charge, and allows it to continue peacefully sucking during the evolutions of the hunt. With the deepening darkness the bat regains its retreat, suspends itself from the roof by a toe-nail, and holds its nursling by wrapping it in her wings.”“That is not so bad a way to behave,” admitted Jules. “I begin to find the bat less ugly than I thought.”“That is what I just told you,” returned his uncle. “Ugliness is begotten of ignorance; it diminishes as knowledge increases. But let us continue our theme.”[36]
CHAPTER IVBATS
“Which of you three can tell me what bats feed upon?” asked Uncle Paul the next day.At this question Emile put on his thinking-cap, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead; but no ideas came. Nor were Jules and Louis any prompter with an answer.“Nobody knows? Well, then, so much the better, for you will have the satisfaction of finding it out for yourselves, from the shape of the teeth. The incisors, small and weak, which you see on an enlarged scale in this picture of a bat’s set of teeth—do they look as if they were made for gnawing vegetable substances, after the manner of rats and rabbits? Could they cut any such tough fodder?”“Certainly not,” replied Jules; “they are too weak to be of much use. And then it seems to me those two sharp, curved fangs must belong to a flesh-eating animal.”“The long, pointed canines do indicate as much, but the molars show it perhaps still more plainly. With their strong and sharp indented crowns fitting so well into the sharp-edged depressions of the opposite jaw—are those molars designed to crush grain, to grind, slowly and patiently, fibrous substances?”[25]“No,” said Jules; “they are the teeth of a flesh-eater, not the grist-mill of an herbivorous animal.”“I am sure now,” affirmed Louis, “that the bat lives on prey.”“It is a greedy hunter of flesh and blood,” Emile declared. “The cat’s teeth are not more savage-looking.”Jaws and Teeth of a BatJaws and Teeth of a Bat“All that is quite correct,” said Uncle Paul. “The teeth have taught you the chief thing about the animal’s habits. Yes, the bat is a hunter, an eater of live prey, a little ogre always demanding fresh meat. It only remains to find out the kind of game it likes. Evidently the size of the prey must suit the size of the hunter. A bat’s head is no bigger than a largehazelnut. It is true the mouth is split from ear to ear and can, when wide open, swallow mouthfuls larger than the smallness of the animal would lead one to suppose. Nevertheless the bat can attack only small creatures. What can it be that it goes chasing through the air when, after sunset, it flies hither and thither unceasingly?”“Gnats, perhaps, and night-moths,” Jules suggested.“Exactly. Those are its prey. The bat lives on insects exclusively. All are food for its maw: hard-winged beetles, slender mosquitoes, plump moths, flying insects of all sorts; in fact, all the little winged foes of our cereals, vines, fruit-trees, woolen stuffs[26]—all those creatures of the air that come in the evening, attracted by our lighted rooms, and singe their wings in the flames of our lamps. Who would undertake to say how many insects bats destroy when they fly around a house? The game is so small, and the hunter is so hungry.“Notice what happens on a calm summer evening. Lured abroad by the balmy atmosphere of the twilight hours, a host of insects leave their lurking-places and come forth, guests at life’s garden party, to sport together in the air, hunt for food, and mate with one another. It is the hour when the sphinx-moths fly abruptly from flower to flower and thrust their long probosces into the depths of the corollas, where honey is stored; the hour when the mosquito, thirsting for human blood, sounds its war-cry in our ears and selects our tenderest spot to stab with its poisoned lancet; the hour when the June-bug leaves the shelter of the leaf, spreads its buzzing wings, and goes humming through the air in quest of its fellows. The gnats dance in joyous swarms which the slightest breath of wind disperses like a column of smoke; butterflies and moths, in wedding-garments, their wings powdered with silvery dust and their antennæ spread out like plumes, join in the frolic or seek places in which to deposit their eggs; the wood-borer comes forth from its hidden retreat under the bark of the elm; the weevil breaks its cell hollowed out in a grain of wheat; the plume-moths rise in clouds from the granaries and fly toward the fields of ripe cereals; other moths explore here the[27]grape-vines, there the pear-trees, apple-trees, cherry-trees, busily seeking food and shelter for their evil progeny.A Bat in FlightA Bat in Flight“But in the midst of these festive assemblies suddenly there comes a killjoy. It is the bat, which flies hither and thither, up and down, appearing and disappearing, darting its head out this side and that, and each time snapping up an insect on the wing, crushing and swallowing it immediately. The hunting is good; gnats, beetles, and moths abound; and every now and then a little cry of joy announces the capture of a plump June-bug. As long as the fading twilight permits, the eager hunter thus pursues its work of extermination. Satisfied at last, the bat flies back to its somber and quiet retreat. The next evening and all through the summer the hunt is resumed, always with the same ardor, always at the expense of insects only.“To give you an idea of the multitude of harmful insects, especially of moths, from which the bat delivers us, I will quote a passage from the celebrated French naturalist Buffon, the most graphic historian of the animal kingdom. But first I must tell you that bats are in the habit of making their homes in old towers, grottoes, and abandoned quarries. There, in great numbers, they pass the daylight[28]hours, hanging motionless from the roof, and thence they sally forth at the approach of darkness. The floor of these retreats becomes covered at last with a deep layer of droppings, from which we can learn the kind of food eaten by bats and judge of the importance of their hunting. Now here is what Buffon has to say of a grotto frequented by these creatures:“Having one day descended into the grottoes of Arci, I was surprised to find there a kind of earth of a singular nature. It formed a bed of blackish matter several feet thick, almost entirely composed of parts of the wings and feet of flies and moths, as if these insects had gathered here in immense numbers, coming together for the express purpose of dying and rotting in company. It was nothing but bats’ dung that had been accumulating for years.”“What a curious kind of soil, made up entirely of the remains of dead insects!” Jules exclaimed.“I will add that sometimes this soil of flies and moths at the bottom of old quarries and caves is abundant enough for the farmer to take account of it and use it as a rich fertilizer. It is called bats’ guano.”“To make such heaps of it, then,” remarked Louis, “bats must destroy insects by millions and millions.”“Five or six dozen flies or moths are hardly enough for a bat’s evening meal; if a few June-bugs should make their appearance, they would be eagerly[29]snapped up. If the band of hunters is a large one, judge of the thousands of harmful insects destroyed in a single season. Next to the birds we have no more valiant helpers than bats; and so I beg you to be friendly to these creatures which, while we are asleep and perhaps dreaming of our rich crops of pears and apples, peaches and grapes and grain, proceed with their silent warfare against the enemies of our harvests, and every evening destroy by myriads moths, mosquitoes, beetles, bugs—in short, the greater part of the insect throng that always threatens us with starvation if we do not keep vigilant watch.”“I see now that the bat does us a good turn,” Emile admitted. “All the same, it is frightfully ugly; and, besides, they say if it touches you it will give you the itch.”“There are any number of other sayings about it that are just as foolish, my boy. One is that the bat pricks with its pointed teeth the she-goat’s udders so as to suck her blood and milk; another is that it gnaws the sausages and bacon hung under the chimney mantel; also, that its sudden entrance into a house means misfortune. I have heard persons cry out because a bat had accidentally grazed them with the tip of its wing; and I have seen others pale with terror because they had found one of the innocent creatures fastened by a claw to their bed curtains.“Here, as in many other things, my dear children, you must take into account the folly of mankind,[30]which is more given to error than to truth. If you were old enough to understand me, I should add that wherever I find a general agreement that a thing is black I think it well to look into the matter and find out whether, on the contrary, it may not be white. We are so stuffed with false notions that very often the exact opposite of the common belief is the real truth. Do you ask for examples? There are plenty of them.“The sun, we generally say, according to all appearances revolves from east to west around the stationary earth. No, says science, no, it is the earth, on the contrary, that rotates from west to east before the stationary sun. The stars, we say again, are small bright points, little lamps in the arch of the firmament. No, answers science, the stars are not tiny sparks; they are enormous bodies which compare in light and size to the sun itself, a million and a half times as large as the earth. The bat, it is commonly asserted, is a harmful, hideous, venomous creature of ill omen that must be crushed without mercy under the heel. No, affirms science, a thousand times no; the bat is an inoffensive creature that, instead of doing us harm and bringing misfortune, renders us an immense service by protecting the good things of the earth from their countless destroyers.“No, we should not vent our hatred upon it and pitilessly kill it; on the contrary, we should like and respect it as one of our best helpers. The poor creature does not deserve the bad reputation that[31]ignorance has given it. Its touch does not communicate either lice or the itch; its teeth do not pierce the goat’s udders or attack our stores of bacon; its chance entrance into a room is no more to be dreaded than a butterfly’s. For my part I should like to have it visit my bedroom often at night, for then I should soon be rid of the mosquitoes that torment me. All things considered, we have nothing, absolutely nothing to reproach it with, and we are indebted to it for very valuable services. That is the answer of science to ignorant prejudice. Henceforth, then, crush the bat under your heel if you dare.”“I will take good care,” said Louis, “never to do such a thing now that I know what an army of enemies we are guarded against by the bat.”“But what a pity,” Jules remarked, “that it is such a hideous creature!”“Hideous?” his uncle repeated. “That is a slander which I hope to make you take back.”“Surely you can’t deny that the bat is horribly ugly,” persisted the boy.“Perhaps I can.”“I should like to know,” said Emile, “how you can make out that the frightful shape of the creature is beautiful.”“To discuss ugliness and beauty with you, my children,” replied Uncle Paul, “is not an undertaking that I should care to enter upon. To follow me in such a discussion you would need a maturity of mind that does not go with your years. Even if you[32]were grown up, it might still be impossible for us to come to an agreement, inasmuch as it is not with the bodily eyes that ugliness and beauty should be judged, but with the eyes of reason ripened by reflection and study and free from the trammels of first impressions, which are generally erroneous. Also, how few possess that intellectual clearness of vision that remains untroubled by prematurely conceived opinions and can thus contemplate things in all the clarity of truth! Trusting the testimony of our eyes and yielding to daily habit, we call beautiful the creatures whose general structure shows a certain conformity with that of the animals most familiar to us and unthinkingly accepted as standards for all future judgments. We call ugly those that differ from these accepted models, and if very unlike we call them hideous. Enlightened reason refuses to be hemmed in by the narrow circle of first impressions; it rises above petty prejudices and says to itself: Nothing is ugly that God has made; everything is beautiful, everything is perfect in itself, as everything is the work of the Creator.“An animal’s form should not be judged by its greater or less resemblance to the forms that are already familiar to us and serve us as standards of comparison, but rather by its fitness for the kind of life for which it was created. Where the structure is in perfect harmony with the functions to be performed, there too is beauty. From this higher point of view ugliness no longer exists; or, rather, it exists all too abundantly, but only in the moral world. Intemperance,[33]laziness, stupid pride—all forms of vice, in short—constitute ugliness and hideousness. To tell the truth, I know of none besides.“But I must return to the bat, if not in the hope of making you find it beautiful, at least with the certainty of interesting you in its remarkable structure. I will wager, too, that not one of you knows what a bat is.”“It is a kind of bird,” declared Emile.“It is an old rat that has grown a pair of wings,” Jules ventured to assert.“You are both talking nonsense,” returned their uncle. “That is the way with us all: we speak at random of animals and persons, giving to one our esteem, to another our scorn, without knowing what they are, what they do, what they are good for. You don’t know the first thing about the bat, and yet you overwhelm the poor animal with abuse.“The bat has nothing in common with birds; it has neither beak nor feathers; nor is it a rat that has acquired wings in its old age. It is really a peculiar creature that is born, lives, and dies with wings, without in any way belonging to the bird family. Its body has the size, the fur, and somewhat the shape of a mouse; but its wings are bare.“The most highly organized animals have as a distinctive mark teats or udders, which furnish milk, the first food of their young. These animals do not feed their young family from the beak, as birds do; they do not abandon their offspring to all the hazards of good or ill fortune, careless of their[34]future, as do the stupid races of reptiles and fish. The females rear their young with maternal care, feeding them from time to time with milk from their udders. All the various species that suckle their young, all that are provided with udders, are classed together by men of learning and called mammals, from the Latinmamma, a breast or teat. I will add that in the great majority of instances these animals have the body covered with fur or hair, and not with feathers or scales. Feathers belong to birds, scales to reptiles and fishes. As examples of mammals you will immediately think of our domestic animals, the dog, the cat, the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and others.”“I have often noticed,” said Emile, “how carefully the cat raises her family. While the kittens press her teats with their little pink paws to make the milk flow faster, the old cat washes them with her tongue and shows her happiness by her soft purring.”“Well, then,” resumed Uncle Paul, “the bat is a mammal just as much as is the cat, and like that of the cat its body is protected from the cold by fur, and the female has teats for nursing her little ones. The number of teats varies widely in the different kinds of animals, being greater in the species that have many young at a birth, and less in the others; which is as it should be, in order that the nurslings may all be suckled at the same time. The bat has only two, situated on the breast and not under the stomach. The female bears only a single young one[35]at a time. Emile rightly admires the love of the cat for her kittens; yet the bat is a still tenderer mother. When in the evening she goes out in search of food, instead of leaving her nursling in some hole in the wall after suckling it, she carries it with her, clinging to her breast; and it is while weighted with this load that she chases the nimble moths on the wing. Doubtless the pursuit of prey is thus rendered less fruitful and more difficult; but no matter, the loving mother prefers not to abandon her feeble charge, and allows it to continue peacefully sucking during the evolutions of the hunt. With the deepening darkness the bat regains its retreat, suspends itself from the roof by a toe-nail, and holds its nursling by wrapping it in her wings.”“That is not so bad a way to behave,” admitted Jules. “I begin to find the bat less ugly than I thought.”“That is what I just told you,” returned his uncle. “Ugliness is begotten of ignorance; it diminishes as knowledge increases. But let us continue our theme.”[36]
“Which of you three can tell me what bats feed upon?” asked Uncle Paul the next day.
At this question Emile put on his thinking-cap, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead; but no ideas came. Nor were Jules and Louis any prompter with an answer.
“Nobody knows? Well, then, so much the better, for you will have the satisfaction of finding it out for yourselves, from the shape of the teeth. The incisors, small and weak, which you see on an enlarged scale in this picture of a bat’s set of teeth—do they look as if they were made for gnawing vegetable substances, after the manner of rats and rabbits? Could they cut any such tough fodder?”
“Certainly not,” replied Jules; “they are too weak to be of much use. And then it seems to me those two sharp, curved fangs must belong to a flesh-eating animal.”
“The long, pointed canines do indicate as much, but the molars show it perhaps still more plainly. With their strong and sharp indented crowns fitting so well into the sharp-edged depressions of the opposite jaw—are those molars designed to crush grain, to grind, slowly and patiently, fibrous substances?”[25]
“No,” said Jules; “they are the teeth of a flesh-eater, not the grist-mill of an herbivorous animal.”
“I am sure now,” affirmed Louis, “that the bat lives on prey.”
“It is a greedy hunter of flesh and blood,” Emile declared. “The cat’s teeth are not more savage-looking.”
Jaws and Teeth of a BatJaws and Teeth of a Bat
Jaws and Teeth of a Bat
“All that is quite correct,” said Uncle Paul. “The teeth have taught you the chief thing about the animal’s habits. Yes, the bat is a hunter, an eater of live prey, a little ogre always demanding fresh meat. It only remains to find out the kind of game it likes. Evidently the size of the prey must suit the size of the hunter. A bat’s head is no bigger than a largehazelnut. It is true the mouth is split from ear to ear and can, when wide open, swallow mouthfuls larger than the smallness of the animal would lead one to suppose. Nevertheless the bat can attack only small creatures. What can it be that it goes chasing through the air when, after sunset, it flies hither and thither unceasingly?”
“Gnats, perhaps, and night-moths,” Jules suggested.
“Exactly. Those are its prey. The bat lives on insects exclusively. All are food for its maw: hard-winged beetles, slender mosquitoes, plump moths, flying insects of all sorts; in fact, all the little winged foes of our cereals, vines, fruit-trees, woolen stuffs[26]—all those creatures of the air that come in the evening, attracted by our lighted rooms, and singe their wings in the flames of our lamps. Who would undertake to say how many insects bats destroy when they fly around a house? The game is so small, and the hunter is so hungry.
“Notice what happens on a calm summer evening. Lured abroad by the balmy atmosphere of the twilight hours, a host of insects leave their lurking-places and come forth, guests at life’s garden party, to sport together in the air, hunt for food, and mate with one another. It is the hour when the sphinx-moths fly abruptly from flower to flower and thrust their long probosces into the depths of the corollas, where honey is stored; the hour when the mosquito, thirsting for human blood, sounds its war-cry in our ears and selects our tenderest spot to stab with its poisoned lancet; the hour when the June-bug leaves the shelter of the leaf, spreads its buzzing wings, and goes humming through the air in quest of its fellows. The gnats dance in joyous swarms which the slightest breath of wind disperses like a column of smoke; butterflies and moths, in wedding-garments, their wings powdered with silvery dust and their antennæ spread out like plumes, join in the frolic or seek places in which to deposit their eggs; the wood-borer comes forth from its hidden retreat under the bark of the elm; the weevil breaks its cell hollowed out in a grain of wheat; the plume-moths rise in clouds from the granaries and fly toward the fields of ripe cereals; other moths explore here the[27]grape-vines, there the pear-trees, apple-trees, cherry-trees, busily seeking food and shelter for their evil progeny.
A Bat in FlightA Bat in Flight
A Bat in Flight
“But in the midst of these festive assemblies suddenly there comes a killjoy. It is the bat, which flies hither and thither, up and down, appearing and disappearing, darting its head out this side and that, and each time snapping up an insect on the wing, crushing and swallowing it immediately. The hunting is good; gnats, beetles, and moths abound; and every now and then a little cry of joy announces the capture of a plump June-bug. As long as the fading twilight permits, the eager hunter thus pursues its work of extermination. Satisfied at last, the bat flies back to its somber and quiet retreat. The next evening and all through the summer the hunt is resumed, always with the same ardor, always at the expense of insects only.
“To give you an idea of the multitude of harmful insects, especially of moths, from which the bat delivers us, I will quote a passage from the celebrated French naturalist Buffon, the most graphic historian of the animal kingdom. But first I must tell you that bats are in the habit of making their homes in old towers, grottoes, and abandoned quarries. There, in great numbers, they pass the daylight[28]hours, hanging motionless from the roof, and thence they sally forth at the approach of darkness. The floor of these retreats becomes covered at last with a deep layer of droppings, from which we can learn the kind of food eaten by bats and judge of the importance of their hunting. Now here is what Buffon has to say of a grotto frequented by these creatures:
“Having one day descended into the grottoes of Arci, I was surprised to find there a kind of earth of a singular nature. It formed a bed of blackish matter several feet thick, almost entirely composed of parts of the wings and feet of flies and moths, as if these insects had gathered here in immense numbers, coming together for the express purpose of dying and rotting in company. It was nothing but bats’ dung that had been accumulating for years.”
“Having one day descended into the grottoes of Arci, I was surprised to find there a kind of earth of a singular nature. It formed a bed of blackish matter several feet thick, almost entirely composed of parts of the wings and feet of flies and moths, as if these insects had gathered here in immense numbers, coming together for the express purpose of dying and rotting in company. It was nothing but bats’ dung that had been accumulating for years.”
“What a curious kind of soil, made up entirely of the remains of dead insects!” Jules exclaimed.
“I will add that sometimes this soil of flies and moths at the bottom of old quarries and caves is abundant enough for the farmer to take account of it and use it as a rich fertilizer. It is called bats’ guano.”
“To make such heaps of it, then,” remarked Louis, “bats must destroy insects by millions and millions.”
“Five or six dozen flies or moths are hardly enough for a bat’s evening meal; if a few June-bugs should make their appearance, they would be eagerly[29]snapped up. If the band of hunters is a large one, judge of the thousands of harmful insects destroyed in a single season. Next to the birds we have no more valiant helpers than bats; and so I beg you to be friendly to these creatures which, while we are asleep and perhaps dreaming of our rich crops of pears and apples, peaches and grapes and grain, proceed with their silent warfare against the enemies of our harvests, and every evening destroy by myriads moths, mosquitoes, beetles, bugs—in short, the greater part of the insect throng that always threatens us with starvation if we do not keep vigilant watch.”
“I see now that the bat does us a good turn,” Emile admitted. “All the same, it is frightfully ugly; and, besides, they say if it touches you it will give you the itch.”
“There are any number of other sayings about it that are just as foolish, my boy. One is that the bat pricks with its pointed teeth the she-goat’s udders so as to suck her blood and milk; another is that it gnaws the sausages and bacon hung under the chimney mantel; also, that its sudden entrance into a house means misfortune. I have heard persons cry out because a bat had accidentally grazed them with the tip of its wing; and I have seen others pale with terror because they had found one of the innocent creatures fastened by a claw to their bed curtains.
“Here, as in many other things, my dear children, you must take into account the folly of mankind,[30]which is more given to error than to truth. If you were old enough to understand me, I should add that wherever I find a general agreement that a thing is black I think it well to look into the matter and find out whether, on the contrary, it may not be white. We are so stuffed with false notions that very often the exact opposite of the common belief is the real truth. Do you ask for examples? There are plenty of them.
“The sun, we generally say, according to all appearances revolves from east to west around the stationary earth. No, says science, no, it is the earth, on the contrary, that rotates from west to east before the stationary sun. The stars, we say again, are small bright points, little lamps in the arch of the firmament. No, answers science, the stars are not tiny sparks; they are enormous bodies which compare in light and size to the sun itself, a million and a half times as large as the earth. The bat, it is commonly asserted, is a harmful, hideous, venomous creature of ill omen that must be crushed without mercy under the heel. No, affirms science, a thousand times no; the bat is an inoffensive creature that, instead of doing us harm and bringing misfortune, renders us an immense service by protecting the good things of the earth from their countless destroyers.
“No, we should not vent our hatred upon it and pitilessly kill it; on the contrary, we should like and respect it as one of our best helpers. The poor creature does not deserve the bad reputation that[31]ignorance has given it. Its touch does not communicate either lice or the itch; its teeth do not pierce the goat’s udders or attack our stores of bacon; its chance entrance into a room is no more to be dreaded than a butterfly’s. For my part I should like to have it visit my bedroom often at night, for then I should soon be rid of the mosquitoes that torment me. All things considered, we have nothing, absolutely nothing to reproach it with, and we are indebted to it for very valuable services. That is the answer of science to ignorant prejudice. Henceforth, then, crush the bat under your heel if you dare.”
“I will take good care,” said Louis, “never to do such a thing now that I know what an army of enemies we are guarded against by the bat.”
“But what a pity,” Jules remarked, “that it is such a hideous creature!”
“Hideous?” his uncle repeated. “That is a slander which I hope to make you take back.”
“Surely you can’t deny that the bat is horribly ugly,” persisted the boy.
“Perhaps I can.”
“I should like to know,” said Emile, “how you can make out that the frightful shape of the creature is beautiful.”
“To discuss ugliness and beauty with you, my children,” replied Uncle Paul, “is not an undertaking that I should care to enter upon. To follow me in such a discussion you would need a maturity of mind that does not go with your years. Even if you[32]were grown up, it might still be impossible for us to come to an agreement, inasmuch as it is not with the bodily eyes that ugliness and beauty should be judged, but with the eyes of reason ripened by reflection and study and free from the trammels of first impressions, which are generally erroneous. Also, how few possess that intellectual clearness of vision that remains untroubled by prematurely conceived opinions and can thus contemplate things in all the clarity of truth! Trusting the testimony of our eyes and yielding to daily habit, we call beautiful the creatures whose general structure shows a certain conformity with that of the animals most familiar to us and unthinkingly accepted as standards for all future judgments. We call ugly those that differ from these accepted models, and if very unlike we call them hideous. Enlightened reason refuses to be hemmed in by the narrow circle of first impressions; it rises above petty prejudices and says to itself: Nothing is ugly that God has made; everything is beautiful, everything is perfect in itself, as everything is the work of the Creator.
“An animal’s form should not be judged by its greater or less resemblance to the forms that are already familiar to us and serve us as standards of comparison, but rather by its fitness for the kind of life for which it was created. Where the structure is in perfect harmony with the functions to be performed, there too is beauty. From this higher point of view ugliness no longer exists; or, rather, it exists all too abundantly, but only in the moral world. Intemperance,[33]laziness, stupid pride—all forms of vice, in short—constitute ugliness and hideousness. To tell the truth, I know of none besides.
“But I must return to the bat, if not in the hope of making you find it beautiful, at least with the certainty of interesting you in its remarkable structure. I will wager, too, that not one of you knows what a bat is.”
“It is a kind of bird,” declared Emile.
“It is an old rat that has grown a pair of wings,” Jules ventured to assert.
“You are both talking nonsense,” returned their uncle. “That is the way with us all: we speak at random of animals and persons, giving to one our esteem, to another our scorn, without knowing what they are, what they do, what they are good for. You don’t know the first thing about the bat, and yet you overwhelm the poor animal with abuse.
“The bat has nothing in common with birds; it has neither beak nor feathers; nor is it a rat that has acquired wings in its old age. It is really a peculiar creature that is born, lives, and dies with wings, without in any way belonging to the bird family. Its body has the size, the fur, and somewhat the shape of a mouse; but its wings are bare.
“The most highly organized animals have as a distinctive mark teats or udders, which furnish milk, the first food of their young. These animals do not feed their young family from the beak, as birds do; they do not abandon their offspring to all the hazards of good or ill fortune, careless of their[34]future, as do the stupid races of reptiles and fish. The females rear their young with maternal care, feeding them from time to time with milk from their udders. All the various species that suckle their young, all that are provided with udders, are classed together by men of learning and called mammals, from the Latinmamma, a breast or teat. I will add that in the great majority of instances these animals have the body covered with fur or hair, and not with feathers or scales. Feathers belong to birds, scales to reptiles and fishes. As examples of mammals you will immediately think of our domestic animals, the dog, the cat, the cow, the sheep, the goat, the horse, and others.”
“I have often noticed,” said Emile, “how carefully the cat raises her family. While the kittens press her teats with their little pink paws to make the milk flow faster, the old cat washes them with her tongue and shows her happiness by her soft purring.”
“Well, then,” resumed Uncle Paul, “the bat is a mammal just as much as is the cat, and like that of the cat its body is protected from the cold by fur, and the female has teats for nursing her little ones. The number of teats varies widely in the different kinds of animals, being greater in the species that have many young at a birth, and less in the others; which is as it should be, in order that the nurslings may all be suckled at the same time. The bat has only two, situated on the breast and not under the stomach. The female bears only a single young one[35]at a time. Emile rightly admires the love of the cat for her kittens; yet the bat is a still tenderer mother. When in the evening she goes out in search of food, instead of leaving her nursling in some hole in the wall after suckling it, she carries it with her, clinging to her breast; and it is while weighted with this load that she chases the nimble moths on the wing. Doubtless the pursuit of prey is thus rendered less fruitful and more difficult; but no matter, the loving mother prefers not to abandon her feeble charge, and allows it to continue peacefully sucking during the evolutions of the hunt. With the deepening darkness the bat regains its retreat, suspends itself from the roof by a toe-nail, and holds its nursling by wrapping it in her wings.”
“That is not so bad a way to behave,” admitted Jules. “I begin to find the bat less ugly than I thought.”
“That is what I just told you,” returned his uncle. “Ugliness is begotten of ignorance; it diminishes as knowledge increases. But let us continue our theme.”[36]