THE FLYING FOX: ITS HABITS AND DEPREDATIONS. 



By THOMAS P. LUCAS, M.R.C.S.E., 



L.S.A. Lond; L.M. and L.R.C.P., Edin. 



[Read before the Royal Society of Queensland, June 6, 1896.] 



Flying-foxes and bats belong to the Mammals, order Chiroptera. 

 The two sub-orders, (I.) Megachiroptera, include the flying 

 foxes which chiefly inhabit the tropics, and (II.) Microchiroptera, 

 the bats, which are much smaller, are generally distributed 

 and feed on insects. 



The four or five Australian species of flying-fox belong to 

 the genus Pteropus, family Pteropodidae. The genus contains 

 forty-two described species, most of which occur in groups of 

 islands. One of the species extends five feet in expanse of wing. 

 The creatures are night prowlers, and as they go forth at 

 sundown in thousands they resemble large flocks of birds. 

 They pass the day in camps, hanging by their claws from 

 branches of high trees with the head downward, and in some 

 species hanging on to each other several deep. If the top one 

 be dislodged by a blow or a shot, the line will fall with a thud, 

 and the creatures can be easily killed. When at rest the fore- 

 wings are folded over the breast. 



Characte)s. — Head elongated, approaching the rat type. 

 Ears, mouse-eared type, but with every variety from a circular 

 lobe to oval and oblong, and with acute to obtuse apices. The 

 ears give generic characters. There are fourteen teeth in 

 upper, sixteen in lower, jaw. In a few species another molar 

 is developed in lower jaw. Secreting glands prepare the 

 material which gives the animal its peculiar odour, in F. 

 brunneus resembling musk. The stomach is simple. The liver 

 is large, to produce bile and honey or fruit-sugar digestives — 



