“I make no positive assertions,” his uncle rejoined. “I merely have my suspicions. The only thing that seems to me beyond doubt is that such an organ as the bat’s nose serves its owner as a source of sensations unknown to man.” “You say so many wonderful things about it, Uncle,” Emile interposed, “that I shall end by thinking the horseshoe bat’s nose much more curious than ugly. There’s another thing, too, I’ve just noticed. Why does the creature have such fat cheeks? See what a puffed-up face it has in the picture.” “With the bat,” Uncle Paul explained, “the chase is a short one, lasting only one or two hours—in fact, the short interval between sunset and dark. The remainder of the twenty-four hours is passed in rest, in the quiet of some cavern or grotto. Does the animal, then, have but one meal in all this time? And what if there are evenings when hunting is out of the question, the sky being overcast, the wind too strong, or rain falling, so that the insects keep under cover? The bat would then be subjected to long fasts if it were impossible for it to lay in supplies beforehand. But these supplies must be collected hastily, on the wing, with no interruption to the hunt which lasts so short a time. Hence it is that pouches are indispensable, deep pouches in which the hunter can put his game as fast as he catches it. The cheeks exactly fill this office: they can be enlarged at the creature’s will—distended so as to form roomy pockets in which the insects killed with a snap of the teeth can be stowed away. These reserve pockets are called cheek-pouches. Gluttonous monkeys have them. That is where the she-ape, fond of sweets, puts the lump of sugar given her and lets it slowly melt so as to prolong the enjoyment of it. Well, when the bat is out hunting it first satisfies its hunger, and then—especially when its nose, the famous nose that we have just been talking about, predicts unfavorable weather for the following days—it redoubles its exertions and stows away moth after moth in the depths of its elastic pouches. It returns to its quarters with cheeks all distended. Now without fear of famine it can remain idle for several days if necessary. Hanging motionless by a hind claw, it feeds on its store of provisions, nibbling one at a time, as hunger prompts, the insects softened to taste in the reservoir of its cheeks. “But it is high time we finished with the bats; their history would be too long if I were to tell you all about them. I will only ask Jules what he thinks now of the animal he at first called hideous.” “Frankly, Uncle,” answered the boy, “these creatures interest me now more than they disgust me. Their singular wings, formed at the cost of what might have been hands, their prodigious nose and immense ears which make up for their poor eyesight, their cheeks swollen so as to make pouches for their supply of food—all these have interested me very much.”