I would lead them (with hushed voices and quiet feet) into God's Under-World; a World of queer small happenings; of sparkling eyes and vanishing tails; a whispering, rustling World. I would have them, whatever their age be, approach this World as children. For children's eyes are closest to the ground. DOUGLAS ENGLISH HAWLEY, DARTFORD, 1910 SOMETHING ABOUT BATS (JANUARY) [Illustration: NATTERER'S BAT The best-looking Bat in Britain] You must all, I think, have seen Bats flying, or, at any rate, pictures of Bats flying, and you must all know that they are night, or twilight, beasties, though some of our English kinds fly about in broad daylight more often than most people think. But do you all know that they are the only four-footed creatures that _really_ fly--for they are four-footed though they don't look it; and do you all know that there are, probably, more different kinds of Bats in England than there are different kinds of any other beastie; and that they are the very ugliest of British Beasties, taking them altogether; and that they all have very small eyes--which is a queer thing for twilight beasties to have; owls, of course, and dormice have very big eyes--and that they have either very wonderful ears, or very wonderful noses, but not both together? If you don't know all this, perhaps you would like to hear more. [Illustration: THE LESSER HORSESHOE BAT You can see his nose-leaf, shaped like a horseshoe, very well in this picture. Both the Greater and Lesser Horseshoe Bats are wonderfully neat fliers] We had better, I think, begin with a Bat's wings, for, when we have learnt something about these, we may perhaps get some notion as to why a Bat is more clever in the air than a bird, and far, far more clever than a flying machine, worked by a human brain, is at present. The reason why a Bat is a cleverer, I don't mean a stronger, flier than a bird, is a reason which you young people will find to be a very common one, if ever you try your hand at guessing Mother Nature's riddles. It is simply this--that _he has to be_. A Bat has to catch his food, tiny food mostly, in the air, and he has to catch it in a bad light, and, as far as we can tell, though we cannot be sure of this, his eyesight is not as good as, say, a swallow's eyesight. This means that he has had to pick up a wonderful quickness in checking his own flight, and in turning sharp in the air, almost head over heels sometimes, and in diving, and in soaring up again. To do all these things well he has had to be built in a very special way, and I will try to explain to you how he has been built by comparing a Bat with one of ourselves, for you must remember that a Bat belongs to the same great order of living creatures as we do, and that a Bat is much more like a human being than a bird is. [Illustration: THE NOCTULE You can see one earlet quite plainly, and his eye "starting out of his head"]