Manchester Memoirs, Vol. liu (1908), No. 11. 5 



shoe touching the floor. The beetle walked a few inches 

 away, and then again attempted to fly ; instantly the bat 

 followed it in a series of little jumps, really short flights 

 of a few inches, and after two or three jumps reached and 

 fell upon the beetle, which it at once thrust into its 

 interbrachial membrane. Directly it had secured the 

 beetle it rose from the floor, flew to a customary perch 

 and, there hanging, consumed it. In the cage the method 

 was similar ; the bat dropped on to the floor of the cage, 

 lying with extended wings and either feeling or smelling 

 round — at least that was what the action suggested — until 

 it found a beetle ; directly one was secured, it sprang up, 

 turned in the air, and clutched the bar of wood, only 

 twenty inches above it, with its feet. The beetle was then 

 pushed into the wing as usual, and the head and perhaps 

 other fragments dropped. This, then, is evidently the way 

 in which flightless beetles and spiders are caught, and 

 possibly coprophagous beetles may be thus picked up 

 when they are crawling over dung. 



This is, however, not the only way in which the Greater 

 Horseshoe secures its food ; it can and does catch insects 

 on the wing. G. typhosus is a beetle which flies during 

 mild weather in winter, and when I released a dozen 

 beetles in my room in the evening, two or three would 

 quickly attempt to fly. It was when this occurred that I 

 felt certain that the bats hunt and locate their prey mainly 

 by means of their acute hearing. The deep booming 

 buzz of the flying beetle at once roused the Horseshoes to 

 activity, even when, as was often the case after eating 

 two or three beetles, their heads were drooping, and they 

 were relapsing into sleep. Usually the bat left its foot- 

 hold immediately the beetle began to buzz, and as these 

 beetles are not always quick in getting on to the wing, the 

 bat frequently skimmed over and missed its prey. But 



