362 Boo III : Yorkshire Bats. 



watch developments ; but unfortunately it refused food from 

 the first, and died within a week. 



On Jul}^ 2<Sth, Mr. Gordon found a young male Barbastelle 

 hanging from the ceiling of the ruin where we obtained the 

 bats. It was dead, but quite fresh, and serves to confirm my 

 statement that the females caught on June 4th and 5th would 

 soon have given birth in the natural order of events. Mr. 

 Gordon sent the young bat on for my inspection. It is a 

 little over half grown, and is almost a perfect miniature of 

 the adult ; with the exception that it has a few more white- 

 tipped hairs on the fur of its back, which tend to longitudinal 

 streakincss. On the under side, the fur is distinctly whiter, 

 more especially on the abdomen and the sides of the body. 

 As this specimen is mounted in a crawling position I could not 

 measure its total length. I made the following measurements : 

 those in parenthesis being from an adult female of the same 

 species — Head and body, without tail, i^^ ins. (2 ins.) ; 

 length of radius bone, i| ins. (2 ins.) ; length from thumb 

 joint or wrist to tip of wing, i^| ins. (2 ins.). Judged by 

 these particulars, the growth must have been fairly rapid. 

 Later, Mr. Gordon netted nine Barbastelles one evening as 

 they entered or left the ruin, releasing all but one that was in- 

 jured. This time they consisted of eight males and one female. 



In the open the Barbastelle appears to fly slower and 

 straighter than other bats, and frequently returns backwards 

 and forwards over the same beat, usually about thirty to 

 forty feet above the ground. But inside a building, it is 

 very much the opposite, and it twists and wheels about at a 

 great speed, and in the semi-darkness is a most difficult 

 creature to catch. Of the five Barbastelles taken, we sent 

 one each to the Hull, Bradford and Keighley Museums. 



The Lesser Horse-shoe Bat in Yorkshire. — Whilst we 

 were endeavouring to catch Barbastelles on June 5th, we 

 noticed from time to time, one or two of a smaller and much 

 lighter coloured species flying amongst them. Eventually 

 Mr. Gordon managed to secure one, and it proved to be a 

 Lesser Horse-shoe Bat . This is a most valuable and interesting 

 record. It has always been a problem to zoologists as to why 

 an apparently isolated colony of this species should have 

 occurred so far north in Great Britain as North Yorkshire. 

 The late Major Barrett-Hamilton, when writing his ' History 

 of British Mammals,' urged me to use every effort to prove 

 that this species still existed in Yorkshire. In the meantime, 

 Mr. Cuthbert Hastings, at my request, had kept on the alert 

 for bats of any kind when descending pot -holes in the north- 

 west of the county — but all to no purpose. It is now more 

 than a quarter of a century since the last Lesser Horse-shoe 

 Bat was recorded from the neighbourhood of Pateley Bridge, 



Naturalist 



