264 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL BIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXV. 



(3) Five October specimens, aged about six months.* — One of 

 these individuals (No. 1941)) is perhaps the most interesting in the 

 whole Survey series of this species. It is a bat of the j^ear which 

 (1) has ah'eady completed its first autumn moult, and (2) 

 happens to have been killed while it was changing the colour of 

 this new coat from dark brown into auburn above, and from mouse- 

 grey into ochraceous-tawnj^ beneath. That this individual is in its 

 first adult coat, not in the coat of the immature, is evident foi- two 

 reasons : — The coat is new and fresh, not old and worn, as it would 

 obviously be, if it were the baby coat ; and anybody familiar with 

 the peculiar dull testaceous tinge of the coat of the immature 

 Rh. rouxi will see at a glance (although the colour is already, even 

 where it is darkest, somewhat aftected by the change into a brighter 

 " phase ") that it is not the tinge of the immature pelage. But the 

 second statement, viz., that the hair, in the moment the bat was 

 killed, was changing colour undoubtedly needs strong evidence to 

 be accepted. Some reader looking at the figure of this individual 

 on pi. II (fig. 5) might say : — " What I see is a specimen which 

 (speaking of its upperside only) is roughl}- half auburn and half 

 brown ; why then is this not an individual like those of group one 

 above, that is, an individual in moult?" There are at least three 

 reasons why this is not so ; each of them would be sufficient in itself, 

 and the combination of them therefore certainly places the matter 

 beyond reasonable dispute. I'irstly, if it were moulting it must 

 either be moulting from the auburn into the brown phase (like the 

 older October individuals, under group one, above, though those 

 individuals were, of course, not auburn but orange), or vice versa ; 

 there are no other alternatives. If it were moulting from an aubui-n 

 to a brown coat, it would follow that the auburn coat was the old 

 one, i.e. (remembering it is a bat in its first autumn) the baby coat ; 

 but in all my work with Horseshoe-Bats (now extending over a 

 series of years during Avhich I have handled thousands of specimens 

 belonging very nearly to every form known) I have never yet come 

 across a single immature specimen in bright (auburn or orange) coat ; 

 whenever an auburn or orange specimen tiTrned up, it was always 

 adult ; at least so far as Rkinoloplnis and Tliijpoi^ideros are concerned, 

 the bright phase may safely be said to occur only in the adult. 

 Turning then to the other alternative, that this individual might 

 have been moulting from a brown to an auburn coat, we find it ne- 

 gatived by the facts already pointed out above, that the brown hairs 

 are not old and worn, but (even though examined under a derma- 

 toscope) as new and un abraded as are the auburn, and that the 

 brown tinge of these hairs is certainly not that of the coat of the 

 immature. Secondly, if this bat were moulting, it must, judging 



• Collector's Xumbers, G.C.S. 1943, 1947-1950. 



