1 18 VESPERTILIONID/E— PIPISTRELLUS 



had been out all night. All that remained was to make sure 

 — a very important matter — that I was right concerning its 

 species ; so the next evening I set the net again over the 

 same hole, caught the Bat as it came out, and found that it 

 was a male Pipistrelle. 



"The above experiment was made on a fine bright night, 

 so I thought it safer to try it again on another Bat under less 

 comfortable conditions, choosing this time a dark and foggy 

 night, when nobody could suppose that Bats would be specially 

 tempted to fly late. Such a night occurred on August 30th, 

 1900, when I netted the residence of a second Pipistrelle. The 

 result, however, was just the same as in the former case. 

 No Bat came out after midnight, but, at the usual time before 

 sunrise, the occupant of the hole went in. Hence, it follows 

 that even during raw and foggy nights, when insects might be 

 presumed scarce, the Pipistrelle does not retire into its den, but 

 continues abroad till its usual hour for seeking sanctuary in 

 the twilight of the early morning. I even find that the same 

 thing happens in winter when the nights are warm enough for 

 the Pipistrelle to fly. I have several times seen it at midnight 

 in the long nights of December and January, and though I 

 have not stayed out at that season to see it going home at 

 seven or eight o'clock in the morning, I have trustworthy 

 information from one whose vocation brings him out at these 

 hours (Mr James Kelly, Ballyhyland), that it stays on the 

 wing till nearly daylight — in other words, flies through a sixteen 

 hours' night." 



It should be noted that Mr Moffat's results do not alto- 

 gether agree with those of J. R. Kinahan^ as quoted, more 

 particularly under Daubenton's Bat. Kinahan's observations 

 show that in a mixed colony of these two species some at least 

 of the bats returned to their den at ten o'clock in the evening in 

 June. In any case, Kinahan's observations, interesting as they 

 are, are not to be compared for completeness with Mr Moffat's, 

 and, as only a minority of the colony were Pipistrelles, are cer- 

 tainly not conclusive. Mr Moft'at suggests that, in view of the 

 undoubted difficulty of distinguishing such small bats on a stormy 

 night at ten p.m., Kinahan may have been deceived in what 



^ Naf. Hist Review (Dublin), 1854, 23-24. 



