Mr. E. Blj-th's Notices of various Mammalia. 463 



females for several weeks. They are exclusively frugivorous, 

 and take no notice of the buzz of an insect held to them ; which 

 I remark in reference to a statement of Mr. Gray, that the 

 nearly allied little Kiodote is partly insectivorous : this I doubt 

 very much. The Ct/iwjjfenis is a very ravenous eater, and will 

 devoiu" more than its own weight at a meal, voiding its food hut 

 little changed as excrement, while still slowly munching away. 

 Of guava it swallows the juice only (though a soft mellow fruit), 

 opening and closing its jaws very leisurely in the act of mastica- 

 tion, and rejecting the residue. The Hight of this bat is parti- 

 cularly light and buoyant, far diflerent Irom the measured 

 rowing, the direct and heavy Hight of the large Pterojyus ; but 

 the general manners and the voice of the two are very similar*. 



The other Indian VespertiliuniiUe fall into three princij)al 

 groups; viz. Rhinolophince, comprising the genera Meyadeiina, 

 Rhinulophus and Hipposideros, and Nycteris (which at least is a 

 Malayan genus), — Di/sopodiiia, including Di/sapes (with its va- 

 rious subdivisions, as Cheirumcles, &c.), Taphozuus, and Rhino- 

 poma, — and Vespertilioniiicc, or the ordinary Bats. 



The Megaderma Lyra ap])ears to be a common sjiecies through- 

 out India, and I have described its hahit of preying on smaller 

 bats, first sucking their blood, in Journ. As. Soc. xi. 255. In re- 

 ference to that ])aper, Mr. Frith informs me that a number of 

 these bats were in the habit of resorting to the verandah of his 

 residence in INIymunseng, and that every morning the ground 

 under them was strewed with the hind-quarters of frogs, and 

 the wings of large grasshoppers and crickets : on one occasion 

 the remains of a small fish were observed ; but frogs appeared 

 to constitute their chief diet — never toads ; and of a quiet even- 

 ing these animals could be distinctly heard crunching the heads 

 and smaller bones of their victims. Other s])ecies of bats were 

 noticed to keep aloof from this retreat, but Mr. I'rith had no 

 opportunity of confu'ming my observation, that the Meyadei-ma 

 preys upon smaller animals of its tribe. The disj)roportion of 

 the sexes in the assemblages of this species in their diurnal 

 retreats is noticed in Journ. As. Soc. xi. GOO ; and indeed I think 

 that the same pretty nearly holds throughout the fauiily. In 

 Mr. Elliotts catalogue the name carnalica is pro])osed, with a 

 mark of doubt, for the Meijadermu of S. India, which however 

 is perfectly identical with that of Calcutta. 



* After a wliile, the three caged females mentioned above attracted a 

 male, who used to be contiinially hovering about their cage of an cvenin'^', 

 and at length took up his diurnal residence hitching to a rafter above a dark 

 staircase close by, where one of the females who escaped innnediately joined 

 liim, and they continued to retreat tliere regularly for some days, when 

 both were caught. 



