34 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 



Red-stars, fly-catchers, white-throats, and reguli non cristafi, still 

 appear : but I have seen no blackcaps lately. 



I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College 

 quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house- 

 martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the 2Oth 

 of November. 



At present I know only two species, of bats, the comon vespertilio 

 murinus and the vesper tilio auribus* 



I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would 

 take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it anything to eat, 

 it brought its wings round before the mouth, hovering and hiding 

 its head in the manner of birds of prey when they feed. The 

 adroitness it showed in shearing off the wings of the flies, which 

 were always rejected, was worthy of observation, and pleased me 

 much. Insects seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not 



PJPISTRELLE. LONG-EARED BAT. 



refuse raw flesh when offered ; so that the notion, that bats go 

 down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. 

 While I amused myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it 

 several times confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon 

 a flat surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great 

 ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch than I 

 was aware of; but in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. 



Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as 

 they play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, 



* It is to be desired that the fishes mentioned in a previous paragraph, as well as the 

 bats, were identified. There are at least three British species of eels, and it is more than 

 probable that two of these are found at Selborne. There are also several species of stickle- 

 back found in our fresh waters, one of the most common, and to which Ray's name as 

 applied belongs, is the smooth-tailed stickleback, gasterosteus leinrus, Cuvier. Of the 

 bats Professor Bell describes seventeen British species. The first noted by White was 

 most probably the pipistrelle. The true vespertilio murinus being one of the most rare. 

 The other would be the common long-eared bat, flecotus anritns. 



