28 BATS. 



I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which 

 would take flies out of a person's hand. If you gave it any 

 thing 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 shewed 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. While I amused myself 

 with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute 

 the vulgar opinion, that bats, when down on a flat surface, 

 cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from 

 the floor. It ran, I observed, with more despatch 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 Rich- 

 mond 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. 



LETTER XII. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



November 4, 1767. 



IT gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the falco * 

 turned out an uncommon one. I must confess I should have 

 been better pleased to have heard that I had sent you a bird 

 that you had never seen before ; but that, I find, would be a 

 difficult task. 



horse-shoe bat, (r. hipposideros,} discovered by the same gentleman in 

 Wiltshire and Devonshire ; the common bat, the emarginated bat, 

 (vespertilio emarginatus,) discovered by Dr Fleming in Fife; the great 

 bat, (v. noctula,) of our author; the eared bat, (plecotus auritus,} of 

 Pennant ; and the barbed bat, (p. barbastellus, ) found in Devonshire by 

 Colonel Montagu, and at Dartford, in Kent, by Mr Peel. ED. 



Mr John Greig, author of the Heavens Displayed, &c. saw a bat 

 flying about in February, in England, during a very hard frost and deep 

 snow. ED. 



* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus a variety. 



