ATALAl'IIA CINKkKA. 1/9 



/ 



viduals have been procured from localities so far to the southward 

 of its usual habitat that I am constrained to believe it a migratory 

 species. William Cooper mentions a specimen that was killed, " in 

 the month of November, near the nights of Weehawken, in New 

 Jersey;"* DeKay says that he "noticed two Hying about quite 

 actively shortly before noon' on the i2th of December, 1841 

 (locality not mentioned, but presumably Long Island, N. V. ) ; f 

 Zadock Thompson secured one that was taken alive at Colchester, 

 Vermont, about the last of October, 1841 ; J and Mr. E. P. Bick- 

 nell took one from an overhanging branch at Riverdale-on-the- 

 Hudson, New York, September 3Oth, 1878.^ Dr. A. K. Fisher 

 has never taken it at Sing Sing, New York, where he has shot 

 several hundred bats in summer, though he is confident that he 

 saw a single individual there on the evening of October ist, 1883. 

 Nothing whatever appears to be known of the breeding habits 

 of the Hoary Bat. On the evening of the 3Oth of June last (1883) 

 Dr. A. K. Fisher shot a large female (measuring 422mm. in spread 

 of wings) at my home in Lewis County. It had already given 

 birth to its young, and each of its four mamma? bore evidence of 

 having recently been nursed. That the species ruts about the first 

 of Auofust there can be no reasonable doubt, for I saw more of 



o 



them from the 3Oth of July till the 6th of August than I have seen 

 in all before and since, and twelve adult specimens killed during 

 that brief period were all males. They were not feeding, but were 

 rushing wildly about, evidently in search of the females. Many 

 flew so high as to be entirely out of range though directly over- 

 head. The only young I have ever seen was shot here, August 

 6th, 1883, by Walter H. Merriam. It was nearly full grown 



* Researches on the Cheiroptera of the United States, Annals Lyceum Natural History, N. V., 

 1837, p. 56. 



f Zoology of New York. Part r, 1842, p. 8. 



\ Natural and Civil History of Vermont, 1842, p. 25. 



Mr. Bicknell writes me that " it was met with about sunrise, hanging at a height of about six 

 feet, in a young tree in an opening near the border of a wood." 





