112 VESPERTILIONID^— PIPISTRELLUS 



wherein, as Mr J. Steele Elliot has shown,^ they made their 

 appearance between the years 1797 and 1838 in the lists of 

 malefactors for whose head a reward was paid. In the latter 

 parish no fewer than eight hundred and fifty-two bats of one 

 kind or another were killed and paid for at the rate of sixpence 

 a dozen ; and, indeed, their deaths cannot be altogether 

 regarded as judicial murders, since they often become a well- 

 nigh intolerable nuisance. At Claxby Rectory, Lincolnshire, 

 where, as Mr J. G. Millais relates, a wall had to be pulled 

 down before a large colony could be ejected, their squeaks 

 and scratchings and their odour were at one time unbearable. 

 Again, Mr Oxley Grabham states that the station-master's 

 house at North Grimston, Yorkshire, was so overrun by the 

 parasites emerging from a colony of two or three hundred bats 

 as to lead to its destruction. 



In its choice of nocturnal haunts the Pipistrelle is very 

 catholic. Wherever the Whiskered Bat is seen, this species 

 may be seen also. Its favourite resorts are sheltered corners 

 of an orchard, stack- or farm-yard, a lane, or indeed any other 

 quiet spot, most often near a homestead, gardens, or wood- 

 land clearing. Here it may be observed night after night, 

 just before dusk, and at about the same time as, but usually a 

 few minutes before, the Noctule. Time after time it pursues 

 the same round, occasionally varying it by excursions to sport 

 in mid-air with some comrade on an adjacent beat, or to 

 snatch a brief visit to some neighbouring hunting-ground ; 

 at intervals it disappears altogether for a few minutes, but 

 generally returns to its accustomed circle, and thus continues 

 until darkness hides it from view. Backwards and forwards, 

 round and round, it flits with noiseless wing-beats, sometimes 

 at an altitude of fifteen or twenty feet above the ground, some- 

 times much lower. Frequently it darts with wonderful activity, 

 now here, now there, or pursues a minute and to human eyes 

 invisible prey into the corners of buildings, descending if need 

 be to within a few inches of the ground. It seems, like the 

 swallow, to seek its food in the neighbourhood of animals, 

 and will visit the cattle in their sheds, or flit about a man's 

 head until a whip or butterfly-net cuts its flight short. So 



' Zoologist, 19065 165 and 167. 



