TROPICAL BATS.
Wonderful Organisation of the Bats—The Fox-Bat—The Vampire—Its Blood-sucking Propensities—The Horse-Shoe Bats—The Flying Squirrel—The Galeopithecus—The Anomalurus.
When the sun has disappeared below the horizon, and night falls on the landscape, which a little while ago was bathed in light, then from hollow trees, and creviced rocks, and ruined buildings, a strange and dismal race comes forth.
Silently hovering through the glades of the wood, or skimming along the surface of the streams, it catches the crepuscular or nocturnal moths, and serves like the swallow by day to check the exuberant multiplication of the insect tribes. But while man loves the swallow, and suffers him to build his nest under the eaves of his dwelling, he abhors the bat, which like an evil spirit avoids the light of day, and seems to feel happy only in darkness. The painter, expressing this general feeling, gives491 to his angels the white pinions of the swan, while his demons are made to bear the black wings of the bat. And yet the bat, in Europe at least, is a most inoffensive creature, which may well claim the gratitude of the farmer, from the vast numbers of cockchafers and other noxious insects which it destroys; while a closer inspection of its wonderful organisation proves it to be far more deserving of admiration than of repugnance. Can anything be better adapted to its wants than the delicate membrane which, extending over the long slim fingers, can be spread and folded like an umbrella, so as to form a wing when the animal wishes to fly, and to collapse into a small space when it is at rest? How slight the bones, how light the body, how beautifully formed for flight!
Though temperate Europe possesses many bats, yet they are most numerous and various in the woody regions of the tropical zone, where the vast numbers of the insect tribes and forest fruits afford them a never-failing supply of food. There also they attain a size unknown in our latitudes, so that both from their dimensions and their physiognomy, many of the larger species have obtained the name of flying-dogs or flying-foxes.
On approaching a Javanese village, you will sometimes see a stately tree, from whose branches hundreds of large black fruits seem to be suspended. A strong smell of ammonia and a piping noise soon, however, convince you of your mistake, and a closer inspection proves them to be a large troop of Kalongs, or Flying-Foxes (Pteropus), attached head downwards to the tree, where they rest or sleep during the daytime, and which they generally quit at sunset, though some of them differ so much from the usual habits of the family as to fly about in the broad light of day.
Many species of fox-bats are found all over the torrid zone in the Old World, but they abound particularly in the East Indian Archipelago. They belong to the rare quadrupeds indigenous in some of the South Sea Islands, such as Tonga or Samoa, and extend northwards as far as Japan, and southwards to Van Diemen’s Land. They occasion incalculable mischief in the plantations, devouring indiscriminately every kind of fruit; but, on the other hand, the gigantic kalong of Java (Pteropus edulis), whose body attains a length of a foot and a half, and whose outstretched wings measure no less than four492 feet and a half from tip to tip, is eaten as a delicacy by the natives.
The same essential differences which we observe between the monkeys of both hemispheres, are also found to exist between the large bats of the Old and the New World. Not a single fox-bat is to be found in all America, while the Phyllostomidæ, distinguished by the orifices of their nostrils being placed in a kind of membranous scutcheon, surmounted by a leaf-like expansion, like the head of a lance, and supposed to extend in an extraordinary degree the sense of smelling, are exclusively confined to the western continent. These large bats of which there are many species, some measuring above two feet from wing to wing, are remarkable for their blood-sucking propensities, and under the name of vampires have brought the whole race of the large tropical bats into evil repute.
The Phyllostomahastatum, a common species on the Amazons, chiefly feeds on vespertine and nocturnal moths, but does also much injury to horses and cattle, and even attacks man when it has an opportunity. The Prince of Neu Wied often saw it by moonlight hovering about his horses while grazing after their day’s journey. The animals did not seem incommoded by its attacks, but on the following morning he generally found them covered with blood from the shoulders to the hoofs. There is still some uncertainty as to the way in which it inflicts its wound, which is a small round hole, the bleeding of which it is very difficult to stop. It can hardly be a bite, as that would awake the sleeper; it seems most probable that it is either a succession of gentle scratches with the sharp edge of the teeth, gradually wearing away the skin, or a triturating with the point of the tongue till the same effect is produced. After the wound is made the muscular underlip of the vampire, which can be completely folded together in the shape of a sucking-tub............