Quadrupeds. 7617 



Three Days among the Bats in Clare. 

 By John Robert Kinahan, M.D., F.L.S., M.R.I.A.* 



So kw are the opportunities naturalists enjoy of studying the 

 habits of bats in their native haunts, thai, without further apology, I 

 think I may venture to lay before the public details of three days' 

 researches in the caves situated in the northern extremity of the 

 county of Clare, in company with Mr. F. Foot, who had the good 

 fortune to discover there, and record for the first time in Ireland, in 

 1859, the lesser horseshoe bat {Rhinolophus hipposideros), a species 

 which must now, I think, be looked on as the bat of Clare, an opinion 

 Mr. Foot has already put forward. In one or two trivial points I find 

 that Mr. Foot's deductions from his own researches were too general ; 

 but in the main the observations which he has already published 

 (Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc. vol. ii.) are fully borne out by those made 

 during the tour at present described. As will appear, during this 

 tour only one species of bat was met with, although the localities exa- 

 mined are far apart. 



The caves are all situated in the same geologic horizon, the upper 

 limestone. This rock throughout the entire neighbourhood is drilled 

 and bored with caverns, often of great extent, with numerous passages 

 and windings, serving, in many cases, as water-courses for the "buried" 

 rivers which give rise to the sink-holes and turloughs for which the 

 district of the Burren is famous. Whether it is to the presence and 

 number of these caverns, or to the peculiar position of the district, 

 that the occurrence of this species of bat in such abundance is due, 

 may be a question ; my own judgment, however, leads to the latter 

 solution, judging by the plants and animals which frequent the dis- 

 trict in question. 



The Burren may be reckoned one of the most interesting of Irish 

 districts, whether we look to its geological formation or its inhabitants; 

 hundreds of acres of a formation seen nowhere else in Ireland — I had 

 almost said in Great Britain — to such an extent, without seemingly a 

 fault or break ; bearing on its surface the manifest ti'aces of ocean 

 action, in high water-worn cliffs and coves far inland, in a surface 

 nearly entirely destitute of soil, and in its picturesque scenery. On 

 it, wherever a plant can grow, the Botany exhibited is such as is seen 



* Read before the Natural History Society of Dublin, June 7, 1861. Communi- 

 cated by the Author. 



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