The Common Objects of the Country

by J. G. Wood

Let us now take a hair from the common mouse, and place it under the microscope. This being done, we find the result to be as shown in the accompanying cut.

The two objects here shown are two portions of the same hair; the upper one showing the middle of the hair, and the lower being taken from a portion nearer the root. Both these specimens were taken by myself from the animals, and drawn by myself by means of the Camera Lucida, so that they are to be depended on.

To return to my caged bat.

Although it did not do much in the eating way, it frequently came to the water vessel and drank therefrom; but it was so timid when drinking, that I could not see whether it lapped or drank. When disturbed, it used to scuttle away over the floor, in a most absurd manner, but with some speed. Sometimes it tried to drink by crawling to a spot just over the vessel, and lowering itself until its nose was within reach of the water; but the distance was too great for the attempt to be successful. In its wild state, the bat hunts insects, as they hover over the surface of water, and drinks as it flies, by dipping its head in the water while on the wing.

I rather think that my bat must have received some injury from the brooms and caps that were aimed at it when it entered the shop, for it only lived a fortnight or so, and one morning I found it hanging by its hind claws from the roof of the cage, quite dead.

I believe that bats generally die while thus suspended, for it is a very common thing to find plenty of suspended bats, dry and mummified, when entrance is made into an unfrequented cave, or a hollow tree cut down, or, indeed, when any bat-haunted spot is examined.

In speaking of the bat, I have used popular terms, and therefore have employed the word “wing”. But the apparatus of the bat is not a wing at all, but only a developed hand. Let the reader spread his hand as wide as he can, and he will see that between each finger, and especially between the forefinger and the thumb, the skin forms a kind of webbing, something of the same kind as that on the feet of ducks and other aquatic birds.

Now if the bones of the fingers were drawn out like wire until they became some seven or eight feet long, and the skin between them were extended to the nails of the elongated fingers, we should have a structure analogous to that of the bat’s wing. The thumb joint is left comparatively free; and by means of this joint, and the hooked claw at its extremity, the creature walks on a level surface, or can crawl suspended from a beam or a trunk. It is very curious to see the bat stretching out its wings and feeling about for a convenient spot whereon to fix the hooks.