SMITHSONIAN-BREDIN EXPEDITION—SCHMITT 425 
strike at Anguilla that night or the next. Fish-eating bats, I found on 
my return to Washington, were to our mammalogists an old story, of 
which the first published record goes back as far as 1860.’ 
The last of the caves visited in the course of this year’s investigations 
was the very appropriately named Bat Cave, on Antigua. This was 
a favored resort of the species that we had captured earlier in Dark 
Cave on Barbuda. Of its occurrence in Antigua our mammalogists 
had long been aware, as our very first specimen of it from this island 
had been cataloged in 1864. 
I never again expect to see as many bats in one place as I did that 
May 1 in Antigua, unless it should be in the vastly larger Carlsbad 
Cavern in New Mexico. Although Bat Cave is no small affair, it 
had been considerably larger not long before our visit. A rock- 
fall had blocked off an extensive passage, which as local legend has 
it, went well down under the sea all the way to Martinique. If 
such connections between these island caves can be conceived, how 
easily is the distribution of their inhabitants to be explained. As 
improbable as the story is, I would nevertheless like to investigate any 
caves on Martinique. 
COLLECTING INVERTEBRATES 
Before our cave explorations on Barbuda, we cruised for some days 
among the British Virgin Islands, amplifying our 1956 collections 
from Tortola (Road Town, March 26) and Virgin Gorda (March 28, 
29; April 6,7). Of the Tortola anchorages, Sopers Hole (March 81; 
April 1, 5, and 6) was scientifically the most rewarding in fish and 
invertebrates taken by skin diving, dredging, and shore collecting. 
Insects were collected from the steep hills encircling this bay by Dr. 
Clarke, who covered them quite thoroughly with net, by ground and 
debris searching by day, and by light trapping at night. 
Similar activities occupied our time at Guano Island (March 27), 
Peter Island (March 29), Jost Van Dyke (April 1,2), Norman Island 
(April 6), Anegada (April 9), Anguilla and Sandy Island nearby 
2That and subsequent observations were reviewed in 1945 (Journ. Mammalogy, vol. 26, 
No. 1, pp. 1-15, 1945) by the late Dr. E. W. Gudger. He acquainted us with the fact 
that the species hereabouts, Noctilio leporinum, is widely distributed through the New 
World Tropics, ranging from Ecuador and Panama and Surinam through the West Indies. 
The Museum has specimens of it from Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Croix, 
Mona Island, and Puerto Rico. 
But no one was certain just how the bats captured their prey until Dr. Prentice Bloedel, 
then a member of the University of California’s graduate school, looked into the matter 
and photographically recorded their mode of catching fish (Journ. Mammalogy, vol. 36, 
No. 38, pp. 390-399, 1955). He watched, and took still flashes and moving pictures of 
captured individuals on a screened porch, fishing in a shallow pan in which he had small 
fish swimming. With their sharply clawed feet the bats gaffed fish as they swooped 
down to the surface of the water, passing the captured fish up to the mouth. That 
night off Anguilla, with our gangway light hung close to the water, young and larval 
fish Were swarming in countless numbers. A few dips with a net filled a quart jar. 
Undoubtedly it was this rich plankton “soup” that brought the bats to the side of the 
ship, more than the hand line the captain put over the side in hopes of snaring one. 
