NOTES AND QUEEIES. ] 73 



MAMMALIA. 



Note on the Age of a Wild Rabbit. — A wild Rabbit which has been 

 brought up by hand recently entered upon its eleventh year, having 

 been captured on the line in February, 1873, by its present owner, a guard 

 on the Caledonian Railroad, when only a few weeks old. This rabbit is a 

 great tea-drinker, taking a "dish of tea," with sugar and milk, whenever 

 any is brewed. Though partial to the kitchen-fender in damp weather, at 

 other times it is much in the opeu air, and is perfectly healthy, being plump 

 and showing no sigus of senility. — H. A. Macpherson (Carlisle). 



Homing Instinct in Bats. — In order to observe the flight of these 

 animals in sunlight I captured three Pipistrelles in an old castle situate 

 on Little Island in the River Suir, near Waterford. These I placed in a 

 box, so as to exclude all light, and carrying them to the mainland, to a 

 point distant about half-a-mile, I liberated them separately. Each of them, 

 after making one or two circuits in the air, went off in a direct line for its 

 home. There was a very bright sun at the time, and a strong wind blowing 

 against them. — G. Gyles (Kilmurry House, Waterford). 



The Serotine Bat in Essex. — Although the Bats found in the county 

 of Essex have received in the past a fair share of attention at the hands of 

 Yarrell, Doubleday, and Messrs. Joseph Clarke and Henry Laver, the 

 occurrence of the Serotine, Vespertilio serotinus, has not hitherto been 

 recorded, having perhaps been confounded with the Noctule. I am glad 

 therefore to be able to state that Mrs. Joseph Smith, of Great Saliug, has 

 in her possession a specimen of this Bat which was shot more than twenty 

 years ago in the garden at Pattiswick Hall, near Coggeshall. It is so 

 shrunk through bad stuffing that it is useless for me to give its dimensions. — 

 Robert Miller Christy (Saffron Walden). 



The Pilot Whale in Devonshire. — After the severe gale at Sidmouth 

 between the 11th and 14th February last a Pilot Whale, or Bottle-nose 

 (Olobicephalus vielas, Trail), was found by some fishermen in a dead or 

 dying state on the reef of rocks called Hook Ebb, one and a half 

 mile east of Sidmouth. They towed it to Sidmouth on the 15th, and 

 by means of ropes and two horses got it upon the beach at the east 

 end of the town, where they enclosed it with sails and exhibited it to 

 the public in the orthodox manner practised on these occasions. Price of 

 admission, "What you like, sir!"— the takings being carefully deposited 

 in a money-box placed in a conspicuous position on the top of the Whale, 

 to be divided between the thirteen joint owners of the prize. A real god- 

 send this Whale has been to the unfortunate fishermen, for hardly anything 

 has been done in fishing for months, the weather has been so very stormy 

 all the winter. I visited Sidmouth on the 20th February, and the Whale 



