orm little loops, exactly resembling
those which occur in our skin in those parts where the sense of touch
is most highly developed; and this resemblance is heightened by the
fact that the membrane is covered with rows of little points. Even the
organs of circulation in the wings are so constructed as to render it
almost certain that those organs have a quite exceptional sensibility.
Their ramifications are very numerous, and the veins as well as the
arteries have contractile walls, rendering the circulation of the
blood exceedingly active, the conditions, as Professor St. George
Mivart remarks, being almost those of a state of inflammation.

If these membranous expansions have the functions just ascribed to
them, we can easily understand that the larger they are the better,
and this will explain why the Bats generally exhibit so great a
tendency to run out into naked membranes. Thus although the ears, as
organs of hearing, have probably nothing to do with guiding the Bat
when flying in dark places, we find that in a great number of species
the external ears are exceedingly large and delicately membranous, of
which indeed we have an example in the British Long-eared Bat already
referred to. In like manner, while the nose, as a nose, may also be
left out of consideration, the development of membranous appendages of
the part of the face in which the nostrils open is one of the most
curious peculiarities of a vast number of Bats, in many of which these
singular nose-leaves almost rival the ears in size, while their
structure often renders them most grotesque. We have two Bats thus
adorned in Britain, namely, the Greater and the Lesser Horseshoe Bats,
but most of the leaf-nosed species are inhabitants of warmer regions,
and it is there that they run out into the most remarkable
eccentricities of structure. In Blainville's Bat, a small species
inhabiting South America and the West Indies, these expansions of the
skin of the face seem to have reached the utmost possible
grotesqueness, but the membranous leaves are larger and the ears much
more developed in many species allied to our own Horseshoe Bats,
especially such as the Megaderms. We can hardly imagine that these
great membranous expansions of the outer ears and the region of the
nose can have any other purpose than that of enlarging the surface of
highly sensitive skin specially adapted for the perception of external
impressions, and it is a remarkable fact, strictly in