If you have ever seen a bat, you will think it strange to class these winged creatures with monkeys, and it does at first sight seem a mistake that they should be among the Mammalia at all; one would expect to see all winged things in the Bird family. But the bat is rightly placed in this division, and you will understand why it has been classed with the Quadrumana, when you have carefully examined those soft, fan-like wings which you can spread out with your fingers. If you could take a bat in your hand, and look at it from head to foot, you would notice three things very unlike a bird about it. In the first place, it has no feathers, but is covered with very soft grey fur; it has no beak, but sharp teeth--so sharp that I advise you to keep your fingers out of their way; then, look at its long ears! It certainly cannot be a bird. Besides being reckoned among the four-handed creatures, a Greek name has been given to bats, from the curious way in which their fore paws, or hands, have been lengthened out into wings; it means "hand-winged." Now, keeping this name in mind, gently unfold the wing: the small bones which you feel, over which the soft grey web is stretched, are really the fingers of the animal, very long fingers they are, and the web is the skin of the back and breast which has been drawn over them, so as to make this strange hand-wing. If you cannot examine a live bat, perhaps by studying this picture of one, you may understand better how this soft, dusky wing is made. [Illustration: "FLITTER-MOUSE" ON THE WING.] The bat is what is called a nocturnal animal, because it cannot bear the strong light of day, and flies about at night in search of its food. We sometimes hear it said that a person is "as blind as a bat," but that is because when bats are taken, contrary to their nature, into the sunlight, they are so dazzled by it, that they fly blunderingly hither and thither, in their efforts to get away from it. They have very sharp eyes, but they do not use them by day, but sleep all day long, hitched to a stone in a wall, or to a branch in the woods by their hind legs--always choosing a dark place, and folding their wings around them like a curtain.