We have been studying together these wonderful creatures, the manatee, the whale, and the seal. These are not the only mammals that live in the sea; the sea-lion, porpoise, dolphin, and others are also sea-mammals. In a book like this we cannot discuss all the animals of any large order, and now we turn from these huge citizens of the sea, to learn something about a small but equally curious flying mammal, a citizen of the air,--the bat. It is a little beast, universally disliked, even feared; let us hope to clear away some of the foolish notions which surround it, and place it where it belongs, among harmless and interesting animals. One evening last summer, as we sat on the veranda, a dark, winged creature with an uncertain, zigzag flight swept above us. “Oh! Oh! the horrible thing,” screamed Mabel, putting her hands to her head; “he will get tangled up in my hair. Bats always do that.” “Mabel,” I said, “I don’t think you ever saw a person in whose hair a bat had become tangled. I never did. It would be as unusual an incident as to find that a toad had hopped into your pocket.” A few minutes after we saw in the moonlight, on the gravel walk, a small, dark object, moving in the most clumsy, hobbling fashion. “It is that bat,” shouted Rex. “Where is a stick? Let me kill him.” “Let him be,” I said. “I can tell you some very delightful things about him.” In fact, I told Rex such wonders that he became interested in bats, and happening the next day to find a young, half-grown bat in the smoke-house, he concluded to take it to school, to ask for further information from his teacher. To do this, he put it in a pasteboard box, with the cover left partly off to give the creature air. The little bat cried, and the mother bat came flying in haste to her child. As she could not get into the box to her baby, she clung to the outside with her head to the opening, making little encouraging squeaks; and thus Rex actually carried both bats to school. The teacher put them into a small cage, and fed them bread, milk, and sugar for several days; then one evening they were set free. Now let us see what Rex learned about bats. The bat has a number of names; the English peasants call it a “flitter-mouse,” from its jerky, uneven flight. The Germans and Dutch give it the same name; the Swedes call it a “leather-mouse,” from its parchment-like wings; Goldsmith used to call it “a mouse with wings.” The bat is a four-legged, hairy creature, with teeth set in sockets in the jaws; it suckles its young; in addition to these characteristics of a mammal, it has wings and truly flies. Were it not for the wings it would have been put in the order of insect-eaters, but its wings have secured for it an order for itself. The name of this order is the “wing-handed,” or “hand winged,” and to it belong the bats, vampires, and flying foxes, all of them truly bats, under varied names.