7620 Quadrupeds. 



cum," " sinuatuin," &c., have been given, — are Iviro caves of small 

 extent, not more than a few yards deep, and facing northward and 

 eastward, their mouths embowered in trees and hung with ferns. In 

 the first of these we did not meet with any bats ; in the second, which 

 is extremely small and dirty, I found two bats, and numbers of a 

 large mottled spider which I have not yet identified. Both the bats 

 were males, and both were visible in the daylight. 



A few days afterwards we examined some caves near Kilcorney : 

 the first of these scarcely deserved the name of a cave, being a large 

 chink in the face of a cliff totally destitute of trees, open through- 

 out to the full blaze of the sunlight, insomuch that the sides of the 

 cave to its very end were hung with maidenhair spleenvvort {Asple- 

 iiium Trichomanes). The second cave — par excellence, the cave of 

 Kilcorney — is of very great extent ; the month is small, and so nar- 

 row at one part that we could only squeeze and wriggle in sideways, 

 and a fashionable lady would certainly have stuck. The roof of some 

 of the passages is so low that one requires to crawl flat : it is a fine 

 example of an under-ground river. The roof exhibited many traces, 

 such as streams, &c., of the recent passage of water, which had 

 gained access by the numerous vertical clelts and shafts, with which 

 the roof abounds ; and the pebbles and rocks on the floor were much 

 rounded and water-worn, like those in the bed of a brook. The 

 heavy rain which was falling outside rendered the examination of this 

 cave hazardous, as floods come on very rapidly : we therefore spent 

 only an hour in the cave, during which time a considerable number 

 of passages were examined, but fruitlessly as regarded bats, the only 

 living creature met with being a small frog found by me at the 

 farthest point ; probably it had been carried in by the winter floods. 

 The absence of bats is not to be wondered at, as, during winter floods, 

 a strong stream issues out of and completely fills the mouth of the 

 cave ; and a farmer in the neighbourhood told us that only two days 

 previously to our visit the stream coming out had been so strong as 

 to flood the adjacent meadow. 



Our next day's excursion (March 22nd) was to the caves near 

 Ennis. The first we visited was Balliallia cave ; here Mr. Foot first 

 discovered the horse-shoe bat, on the lOlh of March, 1859; and in 

 his paper (Proc. Nat Hist. Soc. Dub. ii. 152) he gives the following 

 graphic description of the cave: — 



" The cave penetrates nearly twenty yards in a westerly direction, 

 through strata of limestone, which dip to the east at an angle of five 

 or ten degrees. The entrance is through a hole in the ground, four 



