18 A NATURALIST IN BORNEO 



tracted to mere slits. But in the evening it wakes up 

 and commences its hunt for food, which consists 

 entirely of insects. One was seen hunting for insects 

 in the pitchers of Nepenthes, fishing out and devour- 

 ing with evident gusto the drowned beetles and flies 

 which had fallen into the water that always accumulates 

 in these curious vegetable insect traps. 



The only sound that I have ever heard the Tarsier 

 utter is a little plaintive squeak. The creatures do not 

 flourish in captivity, and it always was a source of 

 annoyance to me that while the surly, cross-grained, 

 and comparatively uninteresting Nycticebus would 

 support captivity for months or even years, the docile 

 and highly interesting Tarsier would die in a few weeks 

 in spite of every care taken to secure a varied and 

 ample diet. The animal has a very characteristic odour, 

 which I can only describe as being a pleasant mouse- 

 like smell, if such an apparent contradiction in terms 

 can be realized. Both Nycticebus and Tarsius bear but 

 a single young one at a time ; the latter has been seen 

 carrying her baby in her mouth, just as a cat carries 

 her kitten. 



The Bats are represented in Borneo by forty-six 

 species belonging to twenty genera, but it cannot be 

 said that the habits of any single species are well 

 known. 



The big Fruit- Bats, Pteropns edulis, are as familiar a 

 feature of a Bornean landscape at evening as are in 

 England the rooks winging their way home to roost; 

 the bats, however, are on their way to some fruit-trees 

 where they will feed all night, yelling and wrangling 

 the while like all the cats of Kilkenny. During the 

 day they hang in numbers from the branches of trees, 



