NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 43 



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 

 refuse raw flesh when offered : so that the notion, that 

 bats go down chimneys and gnaw men's bacon, seems 

 no improbable story. 1 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, not only for the sake of drinking, 

 but on account of insects, which are found over them 

 in the greatest plenty. As I was going, some years ago, 

 pretty late, in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on 

 a warm summer's evening, I think I saw myriads of 

 bats between the two places : the air swarmed with them 

 all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at 

 a time. 



[After a request for " the seeds of any of the following 



tops of the trees on the hills on each side, and occasionally dipping towards the 

 stream that flows through the valley after insects, or possibly to drink. I have 

 also seen a pair of them coming at twilight out of a large beech near the spot 

 where Gilbert White's summer-house stood, and which I could not but fancy 

 might have been the place where it was first seen by him. ... Of the other 

 species found at Selborne, V. naltereri was taken among the rafters of a cottage 

 and V. daubentonii in my cellar. Plecotus auritus is, as far as I have observed, 

 less common here than in many other places." (Bell's ed., vol. i. pp. 33, 

 34 note.) [R. B. S.] 



1 On this Professor Bell remarks : " There is no doubt of the fact alluded to. I 

 have known more than one instance of bacon being gnawed by bats when hung in a 

 cottager's wide chimney to be smoked." (Bell's ed., vol. i. p. 34 note.) [R. B. S.] 



