THE SEVEN SLEEPERS 211 



it begins to hunt, which varies only with the light. 

 When the big brown bat starts, the twilight has 

 almost turned to dark. 



The two kinds of little brown bat, Leconte's and 

 Say's, cannot be told apart in flight. Both of them 

 are much smaller than the big brown bat, and the 

 ear of a Leconte's bat barely reaches the end of the 

 nose, while that of a Say 's bat is considerably longer. 

 All bats have large ears, each of which contains a 

 curious inner ear known as the "anti tragus." Both 

 of these little bats are country bats and prefer caves 

 and hollow trees to houses and outbuildings. 



The black bat can be told from all other American 

 bats by its deep black-brown color touched with 

 silvery white. This bat likes to hunt and hawk over 

 water, skimming across ponds like swallows. Some 

 of the black-bat colonies, or "batteries," are very 

 large, one by actual count including 9,640 bats. 



Next comes the Georgia pigmy bat, so called to 

 distinguish it from the very rare New York pigmy 

 bat. This little bat can be told by its small size, for 

 it is the smallest of all of our eastern bats, by its 

 yellowish pale color, and especially by its flight, 

 which is weak and fluttering, like that of a large 

 butterfly. 



The red bat is a tree bat, spending the daytime in 

 the foliage of trees, and rarely, if ever, being found in 

 caves or houses. It can be told at a glance by its red 

 color. It is the greatest of all the bats except the last, 

 the hoary bat, the largest of them all, with a wing- 

 spread of from fifteen to seventeen inches. This 



