1865. ] MR. W. OSBURN ON THE BATS OF JAMAICA, 77 
“To give the two females and two young I did not require a chance 
of escape, I left them on an object against the wall. They all 
shuffled off, and hung head downward on the bare plaster. So per- 
fectly at ease were they, that I noticed one of the young ones comb 
the fur of the belly, with the adroit action common with Bats, with 
one hind paw, while it remained suspended by the other. Both 
young constantly uttered the acute click on any movement near 
them, as if calling the mother. 
“19th December.—Only one young one remained suspended to 
plaster this morning. I hope the rest got off, and were not carried 
away by rats. It-was very weak. I got a bit of washleather, and, 
screwing it up, made a kind of nipple, soaking it with warm milk. 
It instantly seized it and sucked it dry. I could not withdraw the 
leather on account of the hooked teeth. In trying to give it more, 
a little got into the nostrils and stopped all further experiments. 
So admirably are the hind paws adapted for suspending the animal 
from the slightest inequalities of a surface, that I found I could 
easily suspend this little Bat, after death, by simply drawing the 
claws downwards for a little against the plaster, when they hooked 
themselves. This suspension, like the roosting of a bird, requires 
no muscular exertion at all. The odour of this species is stronger 
than that of any I have met with. 
“27th December.—Returning to-day from Hampstead, I stopped 
to examine a very similar cave to the Brampton Bryan one on the 
roadside. A Bat flew from a dome within to the deeper recesses. 
As it was the only one, I could not feel certain of the species, but 
it looked like this one. On the floor of the cave was a heap of what 
I took at first to be dry leaves mixed with Bats’ dung; on examining 
it, it proved to be a heap of the wings of large Orthoptera. Many 
were broken, but I found no limbs or bodies. Did these Bats bring 
them in?” 
“ Cave in Portland Ridge (Vere), 31st March, 1859. 
“ Males yellowish ; females dark grey; some females show both 
tints in patches. Reproductive organs very conspicuous. This was 
the only species I found in these magnificent caves, and they were 
in no great numbers. They inhabit houses sometimes, but always 
the cellars, below ground, never the roofs—as, for instance, at Mount 
Pleasant, St. Elizabeth’s, where they are numerous.” 
“ Mount Pleasant (St. Ann’s), Jamaica, 14th June, 1859. 
** My host, in an open verandah, showed me a number of spirts 
on the wall, on examining which I could detect seeds of the fustic 
berry (Morus tinctoria) sticking to the wall in the dried pulp by 
which they were surrounded. These, he said, were, to his great an- 
noyance, produced by the Long-eared Bat (Macrotus). They came 
in at night, hitched themselves up, when a chewing might be dis- 
tinctly heard, and then these splashes on the wall. One let the 
wings and legs of a large grasshopper drop. Another annoyed him 
by making the lofty curtain-frame of a bed his perch: the jalousies 
