Holdings hands like an old world family; we were committing our lives together like marriage vows.
Though cultivated in sub-tropical countries such as Natal and the Southern states of the Union, it is essentially tropical in its requirements and succeeds best in warm damp climates such as Cuba, British Guiana and Hawaii, and in India and Java in the Old World.
The group is represented throughout the Old World as far east as Celebes, and has one living North American representative.
Most bats are insect-eaters, but the tropical "flying foxes" or fox-bats of the Old World live on fruit; some are blood-suckers, and two feed on small fish.
The best known and longest cultivated species is the old-world grape-vine, Vitis vinifera; a variety of this, silvestris, occurs wild in the Mediterranean region, spreading eastwards towards the Caucasus and northwards into southern Germany, and may be regarded as the parent of the cultivated vine.