242 RHINOLOPHID^— RHINOLOPHUS 



In the Cheddar caves and galleries, which are often of 

 considerable extent, the bats hang suspended from the walls or 

 roof, or creep into the fissures and crevices. They rest in two 

 distinct conditions, either singly, or more frequently in groups, 

 which may number as many as forty or fifty individuals. Even 

 when resting in company, however, the individuals of each 

 group, unless they happen to occupy a fissure or other confined 

 position, do not as a general rule "bunch" together, but hang- 

 each at a small but definite distance from its neighbour. 



Occasionally, however, especially in the unfamiliar surround- 

 ings of captivity, they show their social instinct by alighting 

 upon a comrade, in which case they cling tightly to the first part 

 that their feet may happen to clutch. Once Mr Coward saw 

 a party hanging together from a spur of rock like a swarm of 

 bees. They were all awake, and had evidently assumed this 

 formation under normal conditions on the way out for their 

 evening flight. This " bunch " rapidly dissolved when subjected 

 to the light of a lamp. 



Mr Coward's observations as a whole corroborate those of 

 Monsieur H. Gadeau de Kerville, who writes of the present 

 species in Normandy, where it is, with the Pipistrelle, one of the 

 commonest bats, a colony having been found to include no less 

 than one hundred and eighty individuals. 



M. Kerville has published an interesting photograph taken 

 by flash-light, of a sleeping colony composed of about eighty 

 individuals.^ He finds, however, that, even in the rather cold 

 climate of Normandy, the sleeping colonies wake up at times 

 and disperse to other portions of their cavern. But he is 

 unable to say whether all the individuals, isolated and grouped, 

 alter their positions, and whether the colony, when re-formed 

 in a new position, is composed of the totality of individuals of 

 which it had previously consisted, or of a greater number. He 

 is inclined to believe, without laying stress on the point, that 

 the re-formed colonies consist of smaller numbers. 



Other French writers. Messieurs R. Rollinat and E. L. 

 Trouessart,^ writing from the Department of Indre, find this 

 bat (as is frequently the case in England also) in summer 



' Naturaliste, 15th October 1891, 239 and plate (seen in reprint). 

 2 Mem. Soc. Zool. de France^ 1897, x., 1 14 and 121. 



