34 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
Red-stars, fly-catchers, white-throats, and regulz non cristati, still 
appear : but I have seen no blackcaps lately. 
I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College 
quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house- 
martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the 2oth 
of November. 
At present I know only two species of bats, the comon vesertzlio 
murinus and the vespertilio auribus.* 
I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would 
take flies out of a person’s hand. If you gave it anything to eat, 
it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding 
its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The 
adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which 
were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me 
much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not 
PIPISTRELLE, LONG-EARED BAT. 
refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion, that bats go 
down chimneys and gnaw men’s bacon, seems no improbable story. 
While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it 
several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon 
a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great 
ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than 1 
was aware of; but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. 
Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as 
they play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, 
* It is to be desired that the fishes mentioned in a previous paragraph, as well as the 
bats, were identified. There are at least three British species of eels, and it is more than 
probable that two of these are found at Selborne. There are also several species of stickle- 
back found in our fresh waters, one of the most common, and to which Ray’s name as 
applied belongs, is the smooth-tailed stickleback, gastevosteus leturus, Cuvier. Of the 
bats Professor Bell describes seventeen British species. The first noted by White was 
most probably the pipistredle. The true vespertilio murinus being one of the most rare. 
The other would be the common long-eared bat, Alecotus auritus. 
