fter dark and quarters the
garden, passing swiftly under and through the branches of trees, they
are sound asleep hidden among the leaves, motionless and silent. But
their flesh may be scented, and their gentle breathing heard if you have
instruments sufficiently delicate. Then the ample wings may suddenly
enfold the sleeping body, and the savage jaws grip the startled head
before there is time even to scream. Without a doubt this is the secret
of the vampire bat's ears.

But to find food and flee death are not the only interests in life even
to the meanest creature. There are social pleasures, family affections
and fellowship, sympathy and co-operation in the struggles of life. And
there is love.

Omne adeo genus in terris hominumque ferarumque,
Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres,
In furias ignemque ruunt: amor omnibus idem.

The chirping of the cricket, the song of the lark, the call of the
sentinel crane, the watchword with which the migratory geese keep their
squadrons together, the howling of jackals, the lowing of cows, the hum
of the hive, the chatter of the drawing-room, and a hundred other voices
in forest and field and town remind us that the voice and the ear are
the pair of wheels on which society runs.

And this thought points the way out of another contradictious puzzle,
that which confronts my argument from the ears of an ass. It roams
treeless deserts where no foe can approach unseen. Thistles make no
sound. Why should it be adorned with ears which in their amplitude are
scarcely surpassed by those of the rabbit and the hare. There is no
answer unless their function is to hear the bray of a fellow-ass.... One
may object that that majestic sound is surely of force to impress itself
without any aid from an external ear; but that is a vain argument built
on the costermonger's moke--dreary exile from its fatherland. Remember
that its ancestors wandered on the steppes of Central Asia or the
borders of the Sahara. In those boundless solitudes, with nothing that
eye can see or that common ear can hear to remind her that she is not
the sole inhabitant of the universe, the wild ass "snuffeth up the wind
in her desire," and lifting her windsails to the hot blast, hears, borne
across miles of white sand and shimmering mirage, the joyful
reverberations of that music which tells of old comrades and boon
companions scouring the plain and kicking up their exultant heels.

Monkeys taking to tree