AN INTOLERABLE PEST.'
" Can you please tell us," asks a correspondent of one of our daily contemporaries, "how to get- rid of bats in the church ? " There are various ways of getting rid of bats in churches ; our readers will find most of them outlined in a recent correspondence in The Times, to which we wish to add only a few wordi of general advice. Do not attack the bats with shot-guns. This method is uneconomical; inhumane, and bad for the sacred edifice. Tear-gas is much better. It drives out the little creatures with the least possible- delay, and invests their exodus with an air of contrition which, though spurious, is gratifying. In small churches good sport and moderate results can be obtained by the use of lacrosse- bats, besoms, and knouts made of old bath-towels. It was, we rather believe, Giraldus Cambrensis who advocated butter- ing all the beams in the roof from which sleeping bats were observed to hang during the day-time. Denied by thiS stratagem that secure purchase which is so essential to their habit of sleeping upside down, 'and sickened by the frequency with which they found themselves, as it were, falling out of bed the creatures (he alleged) would before long leave the building in a body, their health and spirits greatly impaired. But a comparison (which we have made) of the retail prices of butter in the twelfth century and at the present day lays this method open to a charge of extravagance ; and bat-lovers attack it on the grounds of mental cruelty.
Mom.
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