244 RHIN0L0PHID.41— RHINOLOPHUS 



Horseshoe taken on the wing in Cornwall^ on nth January, 

 and Mr F. C. Rawlings's specimen shot at Barmouth on 5th 

 February, deserve mention. The internal temperature of the 

 caves visited both by Mr Covi^ard and Mr Cummings seemed 

 to be fairly even, varying between 50° and 52° Fahrenheit, 

 and it is believed to be about the same throughout the 

 year. 



Mr J. G. Millais aptly describes this species as sailing and 

 tiuttering with visibly broad wings and delicate butterfly flight, 

 but seldom rising to any height in the air. His statement, 

 however, that it appears at a rather late hour in the evening 

 will possibly need correction in view of Mr Coward's observa- 

 tion that it began to fly at 4.40 p.m. in mid - winter at 

 Cheddar. 



There can now, I think, be little doubt that the Horse- 

 shoes do not, like most other bats, consume their prey while on 

 the wing, but habitually alight to eat it, conveying it for this 

 purpose to certain favourite dining-places within the shelter of 

 the caves. These, even when the diners are absent, are 

 betrayed by the debris of wings, elytra, and other fragments, 

 as well as by the heaps of excrement which fall to the ground 

 during and after a meal. The extent of these refuse-heaps 

 indicates that the bats have strong preferences for certain spots, 

 to which they return time after time. This fact was first 

 mentioned by Mr A. H. Macpherson,^ but has been insisted 

 upon by Mr Coward. The latter naturalist finds that the 

 ordinary food of the larger species consists of big beetles and 

 moths, and the condition of the refuse-heaps leads him to 

 infer that the beetles form the bulk of the winter repasts, while 

 in summer beetles and moths are consumed in about equal 

 numbers. Besides these, the remains of flies of more than one 

 size and species have been identified from the refuse-heaps, 

 and the presence therein of portions of certain flightless beetles, 

 hibernating moths, and of a large cave-haunting spider,^ led him 



' Zoologist, 1853, 3941. - Ibid., 1887, 262. 



■^ The following insects are also mentioned by Coward as forming part of the 

 diet : — the large beetles Melolotttha vulgaris of Fabricius, Geotrupes spiniger of 

 Marsh, and G. stercorarius of Linnseus ; a staphylinid beetle of the genus Quedius ; 

 the flightless beetle Nebria brevicollis of F'abricius, and a Pterostichus ; a geode- 

 phagous beetle, perhaps of the genus Aviara, and, perhaps, a Dytiscusj the moths 



