BATS 



with such a puzzled and bewildered look! 

 However, the difficulty of doing the proper 

 thing did not stop it eating. It had a tre- 

 mendous appetite, and I was hopeful of keeping 

 it safely through the winter and letting it go 

 again in the spring. Insects were now scarce 

 out of doors, but in an attic window I could 

 find plenty of flies. The bat made nothing of 

 twenty to thirty at a meal, and one evening 

 ate no less than fifty ! They were chiefly house 

 flies and ' greenbottles.' It was decidedly 

 ' full-fed ' and sleepy after this meal. It was 

 now November, when it ought to have been 

 hibernating, and to get it to go to sleep I kept 

 it in an unheated room, but day after day 

 it continued lively. Sometimes it would hang 

 itself up in a corner of its cage, and, resting 

 head downwards, with wings tucked to its 

 sides, sleep for twenty-four hours, but the 

 middle of November came without it really 

 hibernating. Then a day passed, and another, 

 and it remained quiet in its corner. I thought 

 it was really asleep at last, and that I should 

 get it through the winter all right, but alas ! the 

 sleep was too sound ! Something about the 

 little form made me suspicious: I touched it 

 and found it cold with a chilliness which was 



15 



