THE RED HAIRY-TAIL. 281 



teeth were very sharp, they were not moved with 

 sufficient muscular power to penetrate the cuticle of 

 my hand. The ear altered very little ; sometimes it 

 was slightly wrinkled posteriorly. 



In order to discover whether it possessed cheek- 

 pouches, I caught a small flesh-fly, smaller than our 

 house-fly, and presented it to the Bat. He bit at it 

 instantly, and thus maimed it, but it appeared much 

 too large for his mouth. The fly being viviparous, 

 the little maggots were escaping from the body, and 

 these the Bat picked up one by one from my hand, 

 and ate. At several attempts he at last got the fly 

 itself dismembered, and thus devoured it piecemeal. 

 He drank eagerly, on my holding him by the wings, 

 and putting his nose to the water ; his mode of 

 drinking was curious, he just touched the surface 

 with his muzzle, and then brought up his head with 

 a jerk. A drop of water would adhere to it, some- 

 times projecting in a little globule as large as a pea ; 

 this he sucked in by a motion of the mouth as if 

 masticating very rapidly ; he repeated this process 

 half a dozen times before he was satisfied. We may 

 infer from hence that in a state of freedom, this, and 

 perhaps other Bats, drink on the wing, like swallows, 

 sweeping down, and just touching the surface with 

 the mouth. 



There was no appearance of cheek-pouches either 

 in eating or drinking. While held, it frequently 

 emitted a harsh hissing sound, with the mouth open, 

 and occasionally a little peculiar " click." Both 

 specimens were infested with numbers of a parasite 

 {Nycterihius) rather large for the size of the Bat, 



