Zoologists used to know a very curious animal from Madagascar, by name, or by an indifferent specimen preserved in the Paris Museum. Sonnerat, the naturalist, obtained it from that great island so well known to geographical boys in former days by its being, so they were told, the largest island in the world. This strange quadruped was named by a word which meant "handed-mouse," for such is the signification of chiromys, or cheiromys, as it used to be spelled. This creature, when its history was better known, was believed to be not far removed in the system from the lemurs and loris. Its soft fur, long tail, large eyes, and other features and habits connected it with these quadrumana, while its rodent dentition seemed to refer it to the group containing our squirrels, hares, and mice. It has been the subject of a profound memoir by Professor Owen, our greatest comparative anatomist; and I remember, with pleasure, the last time I saw him at the Museum he was engaged in its dissection. I may here refer to one of the Professor's lighter productions—a lecture at Exeter Hall on some instances of the "power of God as manifested in His animal creation"—for a very nice notice of this curious quadruped. In one of the French journals, there was an excellent account given of the peculiar habits of the little nocturnal creature. In those tropical countries the trees are tenanted by countless varieties of created things. Their wood affords rich feeding to the large, fat, pulpy grubs of beetles of the families Buprestidæ, Dynastidæ, Passalidæ, and, above all, that glorious group the Longicornia. These beetles worm their way into the wood, making often long tunnels, feeding as they work, and leaving their ejecta in the shape of agglomerated sawdust. It is into the long holes drilled by these beetles that the Aye-Aye searches with his long fingers, one of which, on the fore-hand, is specially thin, slender, and skeleton-like. It looks like the tool of some lock-picker. Our large-eyed little friend, like the burglar, comes out at night and finds these holes on the trees where he slept during the day. His sensitive thin ears, made to hear every scratch, can detect the rasping of the retired grub, feasting in apparent security below. Naturalists sometimes hear at night, so Samouelle once told me, the grubs of moths munching the dewy leaves. Our aye-aye is no collector, but he has eyes, ears, and fingers too, that see, hear, and get larvæ that, when grown and changed into beetles, are the valued prizes of entomologists. Into that tunnelled hole he inserts his long finger, and squash it goes into a large, pulpy, fat, sweet grub. It takes but a moment to draw it out; and if it be a pupa near the bark, so much the better for the aye-aye, so much the worse for the beetle or cossus. I might dilate on this subject, but prefer referring the reader to Professor Owen's memoir, and to his lecture.[22] The aye-aye, in every point of its structure, like every created thing, is full of design. Its curious fingers, especially the skeleton-like chopstick of a digit referred to, attract especial notice, from their evident adaptation to the condition of its situation and existence, as one of the works of an omnipotent and beneficent Creator.
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 Voyage 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."