THE CHESTNUT MASTIFF-BAT. 159 



the reader, I may proceed to make him acquainted 

 with some of the inmates. Scores of Humming-birds 

 hover from day to day around the blossoms of the 

 trees, sucking from flower to flower upon the wing, 

 just as the Hawkmoths do in our English gardens 

 in the summer twilight, or Bees in the sunshine. A 

 Hawkmoth with its long sucker exserted, and plunged 

 into the corolla of a jasmine or a honeysuckle, and 

 with its wings vibrating so rapidly and powerfully as 

 to produce a humming noise, forms a capital repre- 

 sentative of a tropical Humming-bird, if the imagina- 

 tion of the observer will only supply the green and 

 gold of the plumage, and the gem-like play of flash- 

 ing colours on the crest and throat. I have, how- 

 ever, elsewhere described in detail the manoeuvres of 

 these elegant creatures around this very Malay Apple- 

 tree*, and shall therefore dismiss them for denizens 

 of the air of a very different character. 



THE CHESTNUT MASTIFF-BAT. 



Between the ceiling and the shingles of the roof 

 certain Bats find a lodging, emerging at nightfall 

 from a small hole beneath the eaves. Soon after 

 sunset we hear the scrambling of little claws along 

 the plaster, gradually tending towards the point 

 where the hole is situated. At length, just as the 

 stars begin to come out, one by one, in the sky, 

 one of the boldest peeps forth his sombre face, and 

 plunges down into the air, rising with expanding 



* Vide ' Birds of Jamaica,' p. 92. 



