34 NATURAL HISTORY 



I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, 

 which would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave 

 it any thing to eat, it brought it's wings round before the 

 mouth, hovering and hiding it's head in the manner of birds 

 of prey when they feed. The adroitness it shewed in shearing 

 off the wings of the flies, which were always/ rejected, was 

 worthy of observation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed 

 to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh 

 when offered : so that the notion that bats go down chimnies 

 and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story *. While 

 I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it 

 several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when 

 down on a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by 

 rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with 

 more dispatch than I was aware of; but in a most ridiculous 

 and grotesque manner. 



Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the 

 surface, as they play over pools and streams. They love to 

 frequent waters, not only for the sake of drinking, but on 

 account of insects, which are found over them in the greatest 

 plenty. As I was going, some years ago, pretty late, in a 



White's name, altivolans, is very appropriate. I have seen it at Selborne 

 for several successive years, passing up and down the whole length of the 

 valley between the Lythe and Dorton "Wood, flying as high as the tops 

 of the trees on the hills on each side, and occasionally dipping towards 

 the stream that flows through the valley after insects, or possibly to 

 drink. I have also seen a pair of them coming at twilight out of a large 

 beech near the spot where Gilbert White's summerhouse stood, and 

 which I could not but fancy might have been the place where it was 

 first seen by him. A very interesting account of one which was kept in 

 confinement by Mr. George Daniel appeared in the ' Proceedings of 

 the Zoological Society ' for 1834, and is given in extenso in the Brit. 

 Quad. 2nd edit. p. 20. 



Of the other species found at Selborne, F. Nattereri was taken among 

 the rafters of a cottage, and F. Daubentonii in my cellar. Plecotus auritus 

 is, as far as I have observed, less common here than in many other places. 

 T.B.] 



* [There is no doubt of the fact alluded to. I have known more than 

 one instance of bacon being gnawed by bats when hung in a cottager's 

 wide chimney to be smoked. T. B.] " 



