44 INTRODUCTION 



noises as thunder, but always started at the tearing of paper, 

 and never ignored any sound approaching a chirrup or a click. 

 At the latter sounds it would invariably awake from sleep, and 

 they were always used to attract it to its food. High musical 

 notes invariably attracted it, whereas low ones, however loud, 

 had no perceptible effect. 



According to Herr Herbert Elias,^ the shrillness of the cries 

 of bats has an intimate connection with the structure of the 

 larynx. The musculature is very powerful and the glottis short, 

 the latter being the main cause of the shrill cries. 



Bats of many kinds have frequently been kept in captivity, 

 and with varying success. Spallanzani, for instance, reared 

 young ones on goat's milk. Few species show any naturally 

 exaggerated fear of man when captured, and the majority 

 rapidly accustom themselves to their new conditions ; so much 

 so indeed, that when well fed they become lazy and slow to take 

 wing. The Horseshoes, however, were regarded as intractable, 

 and had never been kept alive for any length of time, until Mr 

 Coward, after three weeks' coaxing, induced them to feed satis- 

 factorily. Others, as the Long-eared, the Noctule, Leisler's Bat, 

 and the Pipistrelle — one of which Mrs S. C. Hall" is said to 

 have preserved in health for over two years — and, as shown 

 above, the Mouse-ear of continental Europe, are easily kept in 

 health, have in some cases given birth to their young, and 

 prove pets of considerable interest. In warm weather their 

 appetite is prodigious, and an adult Mouse-ear, according to 

 Messrs Rollinat and Trouessart,^ is capable of devouring a 

 thousand house-flies in a nigrht and fifteen hundred in the nit^ht 

 following : sixty-seven large grasshoppers were eaten at a meal, 

 and eighty more followed during the ensuing night. The diffi- 

 culty of supplying a number of captives with food was overcome 

 by these authors by the help of the common cockroach, with 

 the result that the bats brought forth and reared their young 

 in perfect health, and after affording materials for the interest- 

 ing observations already summarised, were released and took 



^ Gegenbaur's Morphologisches Jahrbiich^ xxxvii., i., 70-119, 1907, with plates. 

 2 Vide Newman, Fields 27th Dec. 1873, 656. 



^ These authors ingeniously moderated the appetite of their captives in winter by 

 keeping them out of doors in a temperature so low as to induce torpidity. 



