130 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



one of which was given to him at his request. No specimen, 

 however, in any way bearing on the question could be traced 

 at the time of my inquiries. That Mr. Gray continued to 

 regard these Dalkeith bats as belonging to this species, 

 seems clear from the following circumstance related to me 

 by the late Malcolm Dunn. In the spring of 1886, a large 

 colony of bats was found clustering beneath the rone and 

 eave, and behind a rain-pipe in a corner of his house at the 

 gardens, Dalkeith Park ; on his mentioning this to Mr. Gray 

 sometime afterwards, the latter said they would no doubt be 

 the kind called Natterer's Bat. 



The above, then, was the position of matters till a few 

 weeks ago, when I received from Mrs. Gray the preserved 

 skin of a bat, answering the description of V. nattereri, which 

 she had found in a box along with some other objects of 

 natural history that belonged to her late husband. Un- 

 fortunately there is no label attached to the specimen, but I 

 think there can be no doubt it is of local origin, and in all 

 likelihood the very bat obtained by Mr. Gray from Dalkeith 

 Park in 1880. I have shown it to Mr. Eagle Clarke, who 

 confirms my identification. 



That the claim of V. nattereri to be regarded as a bona 

 fide Scottish species does not rest on a broader and surer 

 basis is, I cannot but think, owing rather to want of observa- 

 tion than absence of the bat. In England, though some- 

 what local, it is, as we learn from Mr. .Harting's article in 

 the " Zoologist " for July 1889 and subsequent records, widely 

 distributed, having been obtained in two-thirds of the counties, 

 and as far north as Durham on the east side and Cumberland 

 on the west. In Ireland it has occurred several times, one 

 example being from Donegal in the north-west of the island 

 ("Zoologist," 1891). On the Continent it reaches Sweden. 



Being, according to Harting, essentially a woodland 

 species, well-timbered parks and grounds, like those of 

 Dalkeith Palace, are the localities in which one would expect 

 it to be most likely to occur ; and I venture to predict with 

 some confidence that if readers of the " Annals " who have it in 

 their power to secure bats from such localities in the different 

 Scottish counties will take the trouble to do so for a few 

 seasons, we shall not have long to wait for fresh records of 



