His whole countenance, from lips to brow and from cheek to cheek, is
covered and hidden by a hideous design of

Spells and signs,
Symbolic letters, circles, lines,

sculptured in living, quivering skin. It is a sight to make the flesh
creep. The books suggest that these foliaceous appendages are the organs
of some special sense akin to touch. Futile again! There are things in
Nature still which prompt the naturalist who has not atrophied his inner
eye and starved his imagination to cry out:

Science ...
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?

Supposing there should be in the unseen universe an evil spirit, an imp
of malice and mischief, not Milton's Satan, but the Deil of Burns:

Whyles ranging, like a roaring lion,
For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin;
Whyles on the strong-winged tempest flyin,
Tirlin the kirks;
Whyles in the human bosom pryin,

and supposing him to crave possession of a body through which he might
get into touch with this material world and express himself in outward
forms and motions; then oh! how fitly were this bat explained.

But let us go back to firm ground. If you compare a dog's profile with