64 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



presence of these animals has often been betrayed to us by a 

 constant twittering squeak issuing from holes in our old trees. 

 I am inclined to think that many Woodpeckers, Starlings, and 

 other hole-breeding birds are ousted from their homes by these 

 Bats. In spite of many attempts I never could succeed in 

 getting a Noctule to take food of any sort in a cage or box. 

 I have found this Bat in every part of Spain that I have visited. 



Vespertilio murinus, Desm. — This Bat, whose claim to rank 

 as a British species is, I believe, founded on the occurrence of a 

 solitary individual in the precincts of the British Museum many 

 years ago, is recorded as very common in France and Germany. 

 The only living specimens that I have handled were one taken 

 in a ruined house near Seville, and another brought to me, with 

 some himdreds of another species, from a cave near Syracuse. 

 A friend, whom I had asked to look out for Bats for me, wrote 

 from Aix-les-Bains that he saw several thereabouts, " nearly as 

 big as Woodcocks" ; and when I was subsequently at that place 

 I saw two or three very large Bats that were certainly not 

 Noctules, and must, I think, have belonged to this species ; 

 unless this was the case, I cannot speak positively as to having 

 seen this Bat on the wing. This animal is, in my opinion, one 

 of the most repulsive in appearance and odour of the Bat 

 family, being generally mangy in coat, and covered with para- 

 sites, from which, indeed, few of the European Bats are ever 

 completely free. 



Vespertilio Nattereri, Desm. — This species, though apparently 

 very local, is by no means uncommon in the neighbourhood of 

 Lilford ; as far as I have been able to ascertain it seldom hunts 

 for food at more than a few hundred yards distance from its 

 diurnal retreats, though it is a comparatively strong flyer. I 

 shot one on wing many years ago on the road in the village of 

 Achurch, and, though I then knew nothing about Bats, noticed 

 that it was a very different animal from the three species that 

 swarm around the house at Lilford in the summer evenings ; 

 in 1870, when I began to collect Bats, I was told by our old 

 fisherman, a native of Achurch, that whilst smoking his evening 

 pipe at his cottage door he had often seen many Bats emerge 

 from a crack in the stonework below the chimney of his nearest 

 neighbour's abode ; I asked him to try and catch some of them, 

 and he brought me some twenty of this species a day or two after 



