g bats, a tribe of obscure creatures about which
common knowledge amounts to this, that they fly about after sunset, are
uncanny, and fond of getting entangled in the hair of ladies, and should
be killed. But there are certain families of bats, named horseshoe bats,
leaf-nosed bats and vampires about which common knowledge is _nil_, and
the knowledge possessed by naturalists very little, so I will tell what
I know of them. They are larger than common bats, their wings are broad,
soft and silent, like those of the owl, they sleep in caves, tombs and
ruins, they do not flutter in the open air, but swiftly traverse gloomy
avenues and shady glades, their prey is not gnats and midges, but the
"droning beetle," the death's head moth, the cockchafer, croaking frogs,
sleeping birds and _human blood_. The books will tell you that these
bats are distinguished by "complicated nasal appendages consisting of
foliaceous skin processes around the nostrils," which is quite true and
utterly futile. It may do for a dried skin or a specimen in spirits of
wine. I have had the foul fiend in a cage and looked him in the face.
His whole countenance, from lips to brow and from cheek to cheek, is
covered and hidden by a hideous design of

Spells and signs,
Symbolic letters, circles, lines,

sculptured in living, quivering skin. It is a sight to make the flesh
creep. The books suggest that these foliaceous appendages are the organs
of some special sense akin to touch. Futile again! There are things in
Nature still which prompt the naturalist who has not atrophied his inner
eye and starved his imagination to cry out:

Science ...
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

Supposing there should be in the unseen universe an evil spirit, an imp
of malice and mischief, not Milton's Satan, but the Deil of Burns:

Whyles ranging, like a roaring lion,
For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin;
Whyles on the strong-winged tempest flyin,
Tirlin the kirks;
Whyles in the human bosom pryin,

and supposing him to crave possession of a body through which he might
get into touch with this material world and express himself in outward
forms and motions; then oh! how fitly were this bat explained.

But let us go back to firm ground. If you compare a dog's profile with
that of a horse you will note at once that the nostrils are in advance
of the lips, and have a kind of portal to themselves.