Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Hi. (1908), No. 11. 3 



Horseshoe (3). As a rule one leg was detached from its 

 hold in order to give more freedom to the half-outstretched 

 wing on the same side." 



On December 28th, 1907, I received two female 

 Greater Horseshoe Bats from Mr. Bruce F. Cummings, 

 which he had taken two days previously in iron-workings 

 in the Pickwell Down sandstone at Braunton, North 

 Devon. These I had fed upon Geotrupes typhceus, and 

 succeeded in keeping one alive for five weeks and the 

 other nine weeks. For some ten days I was obliged to 

 feed the bats by holding them in one hand and pushing 

 beetles against their jaws with the other, but in less than 

 a fortnight both would take proffered beetles, snatching 

 them eagerly from my fingers. It was perfectly easy to 

 distinguish one bat from the other, for they differed 

 greatly in their tameness, and the younger and more 

 familiar of the two had a large female tick {Ixodes vespcr- 

 tilionis, C. L. Koch) on its back. This tamer bat was the 

 first to take beetles from my fingers, to find them and 

 devour them in its cage, and to catch them for itself on 

 the wing. The tamer bat would frequently pitch on my 

 hand or arm, brush in flight against my head, hang itself 

 up close to my face, and show plainly in various ways 

 that it wished to be fed. The other one was always 

 wilder and more nervous, but it would, when suspended 

 from my finger, allow me to carry it about the room, and 

 drink when I held it over a saucer of water or devour a 

 beetle without leaving my hand. 



The size of the cage in which I kept my bats is 

 18 ins. by 18 ins., and 24 ins. high; a bar of wood is 

 fixed at 20 ins. from the floor of the cage from which the 

 bats suspend themselves. In this somewhat limited 

 space they were able to find and catch beetles which were 

 left in the cage. When feeding the bats in the evening I 



