82 VESPERTILIONID.E. 



this country. It was first described by Daubenton in 

 1759, in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, and 

 subsequently by Buffon in his great work. Kuhl, not- 

 withstanding the extent of his researches on the Bats of 

 Germany, and his exertions to procure all that exist in 

 that country, failed to obtain one of this species ; but 

 Desmarest states that it is found there, though very 

 rarelv. Its first detection as a native of Great Britain 

 is due to Mr. Sowerby, who published an account of it 

 with a figure in the " British Miscellany.^' His specimen 

 was found in the powder-mills at Dartford in Kent. In 

 the ninth volume of the Linnsean Transactions, Colonel 

 Montagu mentions two places in Devonshire, Milton and 

 Kingsbridge, in each of which a specimen was taken. 

 Mr. Gray, indeed, in his enumeration of the Bats of 

 Great Britain in the second volume of the " Zoological 

 Journal," doubts the identity of Colonel Montagu's speci- 

 mens with the Barbastelle, because the individual marked 

 by Montagu Barbasiellus, in the British Museum, is un- 

 doubtedly Vespertilio mystacinus. Montagu's description, 

 however, is so full and so correct, that it appears impos- 

 sible for him to have been mistaken in the specimens 

 from which he drew it up. Having received, as I'ecorded 

 in the former edition of this work, by the kindness of 

 Dr. Waring, a very healthy individual which remained 

 alive for several weeks, the opportunity was afforded 

 of giving a few slight notices of its habits, though, 

 of course, only as modified by being in a state of 

 confinement. 



It was taken during a very hard frost, in the latter end 

 of December, in a large chalk cavern at Chiselhurst in 

 Kent, which is excavated at the bottom of a shaft seventy 

 feet deep. In this cavern, during very severe frosts, 

 several species of Bats are found to retreat ; and on this 



