the other four, though very long, must act in conjunction, as they have no peculiar movements, no separate functions; they are a kind of hands ten times larger than the feet, and four times longer than the whole body of the animal; in a word, they are parts which have rather the appearance of caprice and accident, than a regular production. This membrane covers the arms, forms the wings, or hands, of the animal, is united to the skin of the body, and, at the same time envelopes not only its legs, but even its tail, which by this whimsical junction becomes, as it were, one of its toes. To these incongruities, these disproportions of the body and members, may be added the still more striking deformities of the head. In some species the nose is hardly visible; the eyes are sunk near the tip of the ear, and confounded with the cheeks; in others the ears are as long as the body, or else the face twisted into the form of a horse-shoe, and the nose covered with a kind of crust. Many of these animals have four substances from their heads, resembling ears, and of all of them the eyes are small, obscure, and covered; their noses are ill-formed, and their mouths extend from ear to ear; they shun society and the light, inhabit dark places, which they quit only for nocturnal excursions, return before the break of day, and in a manner glue themselves against the walls. Their motion in the air is less a flight than an uncertain flutter, which they execute by struggles and in a very awkward manner; they raise themselves from the ground with difficulty, and never soar to a great height; their flight being far from either rapid or direct, but is performed by hasty vibrations in an oblique and winding direction; in their flight they, however, seize gnats, moths, and other nocturnal insects. These they swallow entire, and in their excrements we meet with the remains of wings and other dry parts which they were unable to digest. Having one day descended into the grottoes of Arcy to examine the stalectites, I was surprised to find, upon a spot covered with alabaster, and in a place so gloomy, a kind of earth so very different; it consisted of blackish matter several feet in width and breadth, and composed almost entirely of wings and legs of insects, as if immense numbers had collected there and perished together. This heap, however, was nothing more than the dung of bats, amassed, probably, from their having made that their favourite residence for many years; for in the whole extent of the grottoes, which is more than the eighth of a league, I saw no other similar mass; I therefore concluded that they had fixed upon this spot, because a small gloomy light reached it from the top, and that they had not proceeded further, lest they should have been too much enveloped in obscurity.