THE KALONG OR FOX-BAT 507 



but as soon as twilight begins to darken the earth, a strange 

 piping and chirping and scratching is heard within the lightless 

 dungeon, and scarcely has the lid been raised, when the prisoners 

 rapidly escape. 



Though temperate Europe possesses many bats, yet they are 

 most numerous and various in the woody regions of the tropical 

 zone, where the vast numbers of the insect tribes and forest 

 fruits afford them a never-failing supply of food. There also 

 they attain a size unknown in our latitudes, so that both from 

 their dimensions and their physiognomy, many of the larger 

 species have obtained the name of flying-dogs or flyino-- 

 foxes. 



On approaching a Javanese village, you will sometimes see a 

 stately tree, from whose branches hundreds of large black fruits 

 seem to be suspended. 



A strong smell of ammonia and a piping noise soon, however, 

 convince you of your mistake, and a closer inspection proves them 

 to be a large troop of Kalongs or Fox-bats {Pteropus) attached 

 head downwards to the tree, where they rest or sleep during the 

 day time, and which they generally quit at sunset, though some 

 of them diflfer so much from the usual habits of the family as to 

 fly about in the broad light of day. 



Many species of pteropi are found all over the torrid zone in 

 the Old World, but they abound particularly in the East Indian 

 archipelago. They belong to the rare quadrupeds indigenous 

 in some of the South Sea Islands, such as Tonga or Samoa, and 

 extend northwards as far as Japan, and southwards to Van 

 Diemen's Land. They occasion incalculable mischief in the 

 plantations, devouring indiscriminately every kind of fruit, from 

 the cocoa-nut or the banana to the matchless mangosteen ; but 

 on the other hand, the gigantic kalong of Java (Pteropus edulis), 

 whose body attains a length of a foot and a half, and whose out- 

 stretched wings measure no less than four feet and a half from 

 tip to tip, is eaten and esteemed as a delicacy by the natives. 



The same essential differences which we observe between the 

 monkeys of both hemispheres, are also found to exist between 

 the large bats of the Old and the New World. Not a single 

 pteropus is to be found in all America, while the Phyllostomidse, 

 distinguished by the orifices of their nostrils being placed in a 



