174 COMMON BRITISH ANIMALS 



Fruit-bats are found only in the Old World, 

 Australia, Madagascar, and India. The fact that 

 these slow and rather clumsy-flying bats should 

 occur both in Madagascar and India is advanced in 

 favour of the view of a previous land connection 

 between India and Madagascar. 



British bats all belong to the second sub-order 

 of ''small wing-handed ones," which' are chiefly 

 insectivorous, though some foreign species are blood- 

 sucking and some are fruit-eating. 



Beddard, in his ' JVI animal ia,^ "^ divides the small 

 bats of the world into five families : 



(1) Rhinolophidae, or leaf-nosed bats. 



(2) Nycterida3. 



(3) Vespertilionidae. 



(4) Emballonuridae. 



(5) Phyllostomatidas, a genus of leaf-nosed bats 

 confined to South America. 



Of these five families only two are represented in 

 Britain, namely, the Rhinolophidae and the Vesper- 

 tilionidas. 



The Rhinolophidte are characterised by the 

 presence of a number of leaf-like processes of skin 

 on the muzzle. 



Of this leaf-nosed family of bats we have only 

 two representatives, viz. the greater horse-shoe bat 

 and the lesser horse-shoe bat, so called because the 

 nose-leaf in their case is horse-shoe shaped. 



The greater horse-shoe bat {Rhinolophus terrnm 

 equinum) is recorded from several localities in the 

 South of England, and on the Continent this bat is 

 * ' Camb. Nat. Hist./ vol. x. 



