to grow a nose in the case of a tapir, but it miscarried. These hoofed
beasts are all very hard up for something in the way of a hand to bring
their food to their mouths. The camel employs its lips and the cow its
tongue; the muntjae or barking deer of India has attained a tongue of
such length that it uses it for a handkerchief to wipe its eyes. So the
tapir could not resist the temptation to misapply its nose to the
purpose of gathering fodder, and the ultimate result was the elephant,
whose nose is a wonderful hand and a bucket and other things. The pig,
being a swine, debased its nose in a worse way, making a grubbing tool
of it.

There has been another attempt to misuse and pervert this part of the
face which I scarcely dare to touch upon, for it is so utterly fantastic
and mystical that I fear the charge of heresy if I give words to my
thoughts. It occurs among bats, a tribe of obscure creatures about which
common knowledge amounts to this, that they fly about after sunset, are
uncanny, and fond of getting entangled in the hair of ladies, and should
be killed. But there are certain families of bats, named horseshoe bats,
leaf-nosed bats and vampires about which common knowledge is _nil_, and
the knowledge possessed by naturalists very little, so I will tell what
I know of them. They are larger than common bats, their wings are broad,
soft and silent, like those of the owl, they sleep in caves, tombs and
ruins, they do not flutter in the open air, but swiftly traverse gloomy
avenues and shady glades, their prey is not gnats and midges, but the
"droning beetle," the death's head moth, the cockchafer, croaking frogs,
sleeping birds and _human blood_. The books will tell you that these
bats are distinguished by "complicated nasal appendages consisting of
foliaceous skin processes around the nostrils," which is quite true and
utterly futile. It may do for a dried skin or a specimen in spirits of
wine. I have had the foul fiend in a cage and looked him in the face.