A NIGHT OUT 149 



where, no doubt, the May-beetles are to be had 

 easily enough to-night. Every now and then a 

 bat falls a foot or two, or even ten feet. Thus it 

 pounces on a hapless beetle, whose ' bones ' you 

 can sometimes hear crunching under the captor's 

 teeth, and whose elytra on a very busy evening 

 can be seen falling as the bats shred them off from 

 the softer portions. They utter tiny shrieks in 

 the ardour of the chase, and I wish I could send 

 up to them the jungle cry of ' A happy hunting.' 



The tiny bat skimming the branches of the 

 trees and the tall hawthorn hedges of the lane 

 is almost certainly the pipistrelle. It is mostly 

 after gnats, but one pursues and catches a brim- 

 stone moth quite near my face. I see it wrap the 

 prey in its caudal pouch just for the instant 

 necessary to tuck in its head and get it properly 

 between the teeth. Our little pipistrelle, unlike 

 the noctule, flies all night. 



Nobody draws for elvin story any other bat 

 than the long-eared. Draw them as large and as 

 long as you like, and the ears of the real creature 

 shall astonish you every time you come to see 

 them. If we take a candle and interview the 

 long-eared bat in the manor attic we may see a 

 very ordinary bat hanging head downwards from 

 a, rafter. And while we look, it erects one 

 astonishingly long ear like a sail upon a barge, 

 then the other, and the two wag at you in a most 

 eerie way, casting huge shadows on the wall 

 behind as they play with your flickering candle. 



