NEW ZEALAND BATS. 79 



CHAPTER XL 



CHIROPTERA NEW ZEALAND BATS. 



How many people especially young people in New Zealand have 

 seen native bats? Two species occur in the country, and one of 

 these at one time was fairly common. Now they are very rarely 

 seen in the settled districts. It is some years since I have seen 

 one in the Dunedin Town Belt, a locality in which they formerly 

 were common. In Hutton and Drummond's "Animals of New 

 Zealand " it is said that " a peculiar interest is attached to these 

 creatures. One has become very rare; the other is on the brink 

 of extinction, and may, indeed, even now have ceased to exist. 

 They are popularly called the ' short-tailed ' and the ' long- 

 tailed.' As if to make up in one respect for deficiency in another, 

 short-tail has long ears, and long-tail has short ones." I do not 

 think this estimate of their occurrence is a correct one. Bats still 

 occur in forest regions, and in the wide and quite unsettled areas 

 lying between the open country of Otago and Southland and the 

 West Coast Sounds it is quite probable that the short-tailed species 

 is still to be met with. The only people likely to come across bats 

 are the few explorers who traverse these almost unknown regions, 

 and bushfellers and sawmill hands, for these animals hide them- 

 selves from all ordinary observers. Bats hide away in holes in 

 trees and in rock caves during the day, and even when flying at 

 night are not easily caught, unless one stretches out a white sheet, 

 when they sometimes flap right into it. 



The short-tailed bat (Mystacops tuberculatus) seems to have first 

 been met with by Dr. Knox, of Auckland, who got one and pre- 

 sented it to the British Museum in July, 1843. In 1871 he got 

 another, I think, in the Hutt Valley. In the same year, when 

 H.M.S. "Clio" was in Milford Sound, several of these bats were 

 caught when the sails were being hung out to dry. When Hutton 

 described this species in 1871 there were only two specimens in 

 the Colonial Museum one from the Hutt Valley and the other from 

 the "Clio." 



