BATS 133

when I wanted to make reptiles fly I thought of
this and of that and of something else and the
thing was done."

Then he: "Yes, yes, my dear lady—that was
clever, too, no doubt; only your flying lizard
wasn't wound up to go on for ever—not as a
lizard at all events; and what I should like you
to tell me is: When you have got your little
beast in the air how are you going to get him to
stay there?"

Her sharp reply was: "By thinking," for she
was angry at his supercilious Aldebaran airs.
And, put on her mettle, it was only by sheer
hard thinking that she finally succeeded in ac-
complishing her object—this, too, as it were, by
means of a subtle trick. For the bird problem had
been a very different one; her experiments with
flying lizards had suggested it, and she was able
to create this new and finer being an inhabitant
of the air by giving it its peculiar pointed wedge
shape, its covering of feathers, with feathers for
flight—hard as steel, light as gossamer, bloodless,
nerveless. And correlated with shape and flight
and life in the air, a development of power o£
vision which, compared with that of mammals
and reptiles, is like a supernatural faculty.

Her subtle trick, in the case of the bat, was to
reverse the process followed in building up the
bird; to suspend her beast head down by the
toes instead of making him perch with his head