DANGER OF INTRODUCING NOXIOUS ANIMALS AND BIRDS. 97 



and was captured and kept as a pet by one of the passengers. 

 It was promptly killed by the quarantine officer at San Francisco, 

 and four more, which ari'ived in captivity two months later from 

 China, on the steamer Rio de Janeiro, met the same fate. Attention 

 was called to the danger of the new pest, and one of the regulations 

 adopted by the State l)oard of horticulture in the following year pro- 

 hibited the impoi'tation of these animals into Califcn-nia. 



Flying foxes belong to the genus Pteropus (fig. 1), one of the best- 

 known groups of fruit-eating bats. The genus includes some fifty 

 species which are found in the tropics of the Old AVorld, from Mada- 

 gascar and the Comoro Islands east to Australia, and the Samoan 

 islands, and north to India, Malay Archipelago, and southern Japan. 

 Five species occur in Australia, two of them as far south as New South 

 Wales (lat. 35° S.), but none are 

 found in New Zealand or in the Ha- 

 waiian Islands. The largest species 

 is the Kalong or Malay fruit bat 

 {Pteropus edulis), which measures 

 more than 5 feet across the tips of 

 the wings. 



In Australia these bats are de- 

 scribed as living in immense commu- 

 nities or "camps" in the most inac- 

 cessible parts of the dense scrub of 

 gullies and swamps. Here they may 

 be seen by thousands, frequently 

 crowded so thickly on the trees that 

 Lirge branches are broken bj' their 

 weight. They fly considerable dis- 

 tances in search of food, sallying 

 forth in flocks about sunset and re- 

 turning to their camps before dawn. 

 In New Soitth Wales, and more espe- 

 cially in Queensland, flying foxes are one of the worst pests of the fruit 

 grower, and are described as a i:)lague which threatens the fruit-growing 

 industry in a large part of Australia. They are particularly injuriotis 

 to figs, bananas, peaches, and other soft fruit, and it is estimated that 

 the damage done to orchards in the coast district of New South Wales 

 amounts to many thousands of pounds annually. Various expedients 

 have been suggested to protect orchards from their depredations. 

 Rags dipped in melted sidphur and hung among the branches, netting 

 placed over the trees, and wires suspended around the trees, and even 

 stretched close together from poles and covering the whole orchard 

 have been tried, but apparently without much success. The most prac- 

 tical method is to destroy the bats in their camps. A few years ago the 

 Minister for Mines and Agriculture for New South Wales supplied 



Fig. 1.— Flying fox (Ptero]jus sp.. redrawn 

 from Proceedings Zoological Society, 

 London, ISTi). 



