back with bats

this is a real long article ... but interesting (it's actually just one chapter in the book "Bats, Mosquitoes and Dollars" By Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell") ... it all derived from this image i found at shorpy of the municipal bat-roost of san antonio, 1916. but what purpose could this structure serve, except maybe as a sanctuary for dracula and his cohorts (why else would they put a cross on top!?) ...

Very many thoughts of this nature crossed the author's mind, long before this work had even a good theoretical basis. It was realized that the burning question, the great desideratum, would be (if the work were ever to be brought to a reasonable degree of perfection), "Can bats like bees be colonized and made to multiply where we want them?" If this could not be done, there would be little use in continuing a work that would represent only scientific value, when the fundamental idea was to accomplish the eradication of that world-wide disease, malaria, which Nature intended man, and man only, to carry.

pretty strange way to deal with a pandemic ... but do whachu gotta do