"6 M. C. COOKE ON THE HAIRS OF INDIAN BATS. 



After alluding to the structure of the hair of English bats, Mr. 

 Gosse, in his " Evenings with the JVIicroscope," says : " Even this 

 is far excelled by a species of bat from India. The trumpet-lilve 

 cups are here very thin and transparent, but very expansive, the 

 diameter of the lip being, in some parts of the hair, fully thrice as 

 great as that of the stem itself. The margin of each cup appears 

 to be undivided, but very irregularly notched and cut. In the 

 middle portion of the hair, the cups are far more crowded than in 

 the basal part, more brush-like, and less elegant ; and this structure 

 is continued to the very extremity, which is not drawn out to so 

 attenuated a point as the hair of the mouse, though it is of needle- 

 like sharpness. The trumpet-shaped scales are, it seems, liable to 

 be removed by accident ; for in these dozen hairs there are several 

 in which we see one or more cups rubbed off, and in one the stem 

 is destitute of them for a considerable space. The stem so denuded 

 closely resembled the basal part of a mouse's hair in its ordinary 

 condition" (p. 13, figs, ah c. 1859). 



In the " Micrographic Dictionary " (pi. xxii., f. 6), is a figure 

 with the brief remark that it is the hair of " the Indian bat, in 

 which the scales are grouped in whorls at pretty regular intervals 

 along the shaft, and project considerably beyond the surface " 

 (p. 335. 1860). 



In Griffiths's " Text Book for the Microscope," the author 

 writes : " In the hairs of some of the foreign bats, the scales are 

 whorled, forming very beautiful objects " (p. 118. 1864). 



In Willkomm's " Die Wmider des Mikroskops," the figures of 

 which are, singularly enough, identical with those in Hogg " On 

 the Microscope," at p. 242 (fig. 144. 1856j, the figure of the hair 

 of Indian bat is given, without further remarks. 



I may remark as a curiosity that, in Fonvielles' " Les Merveilles 

 du Monde Invisible," the hair of the larva of Anthrenus is figured 

 as the hair of a bat. 



Although doubts have been very freely expressed, whether the 

 " Hair of Indian bat " is the hair of a bat at all, I think that there 

 is really no good ground for scepticism ; indeed, the only support 

 which I conceive that scepticism can receive will be in the produc- 

 tion of the hair of some other animal more resembling that which 

 is sold by Topping as " Hair of Indian bat," than any known 

 s])ecimens of hair derived from an undoubted bat. It must be 

 borne in mind that the hairs which I exhibit are from animals 



