THE BATS 89 



soon regain their normal weight. The noctule emits a very 

 offensive smell from glands in the mouth. It would seem to 

 possess a relative insensibility to the effects of poison. One 

 living specimen had a drop of prussic 

 acid placed on its tongue, and was 

 .some time dying. Meantime its 

 parasites (all bats are much afflicted 

 with fleas and lice) dropped off dead 

 from the poisoned blood. 



The range of the great bat in 

 Britain is confined to the midland head of noctule bat ^nearly 



, twice natural size). 



counties, the south and south-west. 



Yorkshire and Lancashire are its northern limits. It has not 

 been found in Wales or Scotland, but does appear to occur in 

 Ireland, specimens having been obtained in the north-east of 

 that island. It is, apparently, commonest in our midland counties. 

 Outside England, it is found throughout Temperate and Southern 

 Europe and most parts of Asia ; also nearly the whole of Africa. 



Pterygistes leisleri. The Hairy- armed Bat 

 This species closely resembles the noctule, but it is a little 

 smaller, and there is some difference in the incisor teeth, those 

 in the lower jaw being ranged in a semicircle with no overlapping, 

 whereas the incisor teeth in the lower jaw of the noctule are 

 crowded, and the outermost pair of upper incisor teeth in the 

 species now described are not so disproportionately broad and 

 short as in the noctule. The length of the head and body of 

 the Hairy-armed Bat is about 2J in., while the tail measures 

 nearly if in. The bat takes its English name from the fact 

 that the inner surface of the fore arm, instead of being covered 

 with bare skin, is furred with fine, short hairs as far down as the 

 wrist. The side of the fore arm in the noctule is also hairy, but 

 not to such a marked extent. The nostrils are crescent-shaped, 

 and there is a large naked gland near the angle of the mouth. 

 The outer margin of the ears does not reach as far as the corner 

 of the mouth, and the ears are hairy on the inner surface. The 



