180 WILD BEASTS OF THE WORLD 



This species cannot, however, compare in aptitude for cage-life with 

 the Collared Fruit-Bat of Africa (Cynonycteris collaris), a rather smaller 

 species with a rudimentary tail, which bred freely, generation after 

 generation, in the London Zoological Gardens, though the specimens 

 were confined in cages so narrow that flight was impossible. This 

 Bat is a cave-haunter, and does not roost in trees by day. 



There are a considerable number of species of these Old World 

 fruit-eating Bats, much alike in general habits, but varying considerably 

 in size, from the Kalong (Pteropus edulis) of Malacca and the East 

 Indies, which measures five feet across the wings, down to the little 

 Long-tongued Fruit-Bat {Carponycteris minima), which is smaller 

 than our Noctule or Great Bat, for the Megachiroptera, although they 

 average considerably larger than the other section, are not always so. 

 The Long-tongued Fruit-Bats have the tongue not only long and 

 extensible, but furnished with a kind of brush at the tip, very suitable 

 for licking out the soft pulp of fruit. Big or small, the Fruit-Bats 

 are the bane of fruit-growers in the East, and the American Government 

 is so afraid of these pests getting a footing in the Western world, that 

 their importation into the United States is not allowed, and any one 

 who comes ashore with a live Flying-Fox has the mortification of 

 seeing his pet incontinently executed. 



