Mr. Montagu's Account of some Species of Bats. 171 



to find its hive wifen captured and taken to a distance? This is 

 inexplicable, and yet no one will dispute the fact. Indeed the 

 practice is common in some countries, in order to- find the wild 

 hives; for if two bees are taken near the same spot, and turned 

 out at different points, distant from each other a few hundred 

 yards, if belonging to the same hive, the two lines formed by 

 the direction of their flight will discover the hive to be at the 

 intersection of those lines. These are the mysteries of nature, so 

 impenetrable to the human mind, that we are lost in a labyrinth 

 of wonder at such instinctive endowments, which are incompre- 

 hensible to our limited faculties. We have only attentively <o 

 examine the operations of nature, and we shall' find a thousand 

 instances not less astonishing than that the Bat should find its 

 road without one single ray of light to direct its course*. 



Vespertilio Barbastellus. 

 Gmcl Si/st. i. p. 48. Buffon. viii. p. 130. t. 19. f. 1. 

 Pennant Quadr. ii. p. 56l. Shaw Z00L i. p. 133. 



Brit. Miscellany, t. v. 



> 



This species has long been known to be an inhabitant of some 

 parts of the European continent, especially France, but, I be- 

 lieve, had not been discovered to inhabit England till the year 

 1800, when I first noticed it to be indigenous to the -south of 

 Devon, and had prepared an account of it for the Linnean 

 Society. Since that period others have occurred in the same 



* Since the preceding account was written, several of both these species of Eats 

 have been collected from the same cavern, and in one of the V. minulus the abdominal 

 papillae were more conspicuous than in the former; but not the least vestige of such could 

 be found in the V. Ferrum-equinum: it should, however, be remarked, that in these the 

 pectoral teats were equally invisible. 



z % county; 



