A BABY BAT.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—The following extract from a letter from a friend may interest your readers :—" The other evening, as L, and I sat out on the verandah after supper, we heard a tiny chirp, or rather a miniature squeaking. L. put her band into the recess of the window, and caught, something very tiny and cold. We called to Bruni, who was clearing away the supper things, to bring the lamp,. and there was the most fairy or demon like thing I had ever seen,—a baby bat ! If you can fancy Luca Signorelli's bat-winged devils at Orvieto, of a size to sit in my thimble (he does so most comfortably), you will get a very good notion of him. He could not have been over a day old, and had evidently dropped from his hold on his bat-mamma (as they fly about with their young—two, at the utmost, at a birth—clinging to them) as she was sailing about in the twilight. He was extremely agile, and scolded vehemently, chattering with his little baby jaws and snapping right and left. His wings are gathered up, and he uses the front wing. bone, with one hook at the end, and the back wing-bone, ending in five toes, to crawl about with ; also he scratches his ear, quite like a dog, with his hind-leg. I never saw anything so tiny so able to take care of itself. His eyes are still closed, but by scent and feeling he crawls quickly over the artificial rocks I have made him with bits of bark, &c., under a big glass-bowl, with a bit of cardboard under one side to raise it up enough for the air to get in. You are wondering how we keep him alive ? I read somewhere that bats are fond of milk, so I pick him up and hold him between thumb and finger, and drop milk from the tip of my little finger (only so. much at a time as would hold upon the point of a pin) into his month. He swallows it with a queer little clicking noise, and when he has had enough he tarns his head aside like a peevish baby. We are immensely amused with him. It is several days since we found him, and he gets livelier every day. When he gets reasonably big and able to catch flies and insects for himself, he will be put out on an upstairs balcony, to fly off as soon as his wings will bear him. It is almost weird to see this miniature being climb to the top of one of his rocks,' and sit with outstretched head snuffing the air as. though an ocean were before him, then extend a claw and climb down, and hang himself by his queer little flexible hind-
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