THE LONG-EARED BAT. 47 



absolutely injuring the coats of the eye would 

 have roused it to sensation. 



I put both bread and raw flesh into the box con- 

 taining these Bats, yet they ate no part of them. 

 I killed some flies and put them in, and these were 

 soon devoured. As my room was, of course, much 

 warmer than the retreats from which the animals 

 had been brought to me, they did not become tor- 

 pid during any part of the time I had them; but, 

 as I was not able to procure a sufficiency of their 

 natural food, they all died before the winter was 

 over. 



They invariably slept in the day, collected close 

 together in one corner of the box, with their heads 

 downward. Eight o'clock in the evening was ge- 

 nerally the time about which they awoke, and com- 

 menced their efforts to escape. After this hour, 

 whenever I opened the box, I had always some 

 difficulty to prevent them from climbing up the 

 sides and taking wing. 



The winter retreat of the Long-eared Bats is usu- 

 ally in ruinous or uninhabited buildings. Mr. 

 Bradley informs us, that he has occasionally found 

 them in old walls, in considerable numbers, in a 

 perfectly torpid state, and so closely pressed to each 

 other, that their natural figure was scarcely dis- 

 cernible *. 



Their voice, like that of the Common Bats, is a 



* Bradley's Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature, p. 120. 



kind 



