ii6 VESPERTILIONID^— PIPISTRELLUS 



large quantities of the smaller moths ; and Mr Moffat has 

 noticed that when it secures anything of formidable propor- 

 tions, it invariably disappears for a few minutes, unlike the 

 larger Leisler's Bat, which does not permit the struggles of 

 any insect to interrupt its flight. 



Mr Moffat has taken considerable pains to show that, 

 unlike that of the Noctule and Leisler's Bat, the flight of the 

 Pipistrelle is continued all night : and this in spite of the fact 

 that the majority of British naturalists, from Dobson^ to Mr 

 Millais, with the exception of William MacGillivray and a few 

 others, seem to have taken it for granted that this species, 

 like others which are without nasal appendages, must be more 

 properly crepuscular than nocturnal in its habits. Mr Moffat 

 writes : ^ — 



" Of course, in observing Bats, one must be very careful 

 that one knows what sort of Bat one is observing. The 

 difficulty of being quite certain on that point vitiates a good 

 many observations that might otherwise be useful. However, 

 I began my enquiries into the Pipistrelle's habits by passing 

 a night in the open air in bright moonlight, in a spot where 

 large numbers of Bats generally fly. The result of this pre- 

 liminary mode of enquiry (on the night of August 2ist-22nd, 

 1 899) was that I found that there were lots of Bats visible on 

 the wing at all hours throughout the night, as well as in the 

 clear light of early morning. That was not conclusive, be- 

 cause, in the first place, these Bats might not all have been 

 Pipistrelles, and, even if they were, some might have gone 

 home early and others come out late, so that there was no 

 proof that any individual Bat, Pipistrelle or otherwise, had 

 been flying about the whole time. The next thing to do was, 

 therefore, to find out where some of these Bats went in the 

 morning. By watching on several mornings, in the summers 

 of 1899 and 1900, I ultimately got the retreats of half a dozen, 

 each living a perfectly solitary life in a little den of its own — 

 some in holes in walls, and some in the trunks of trees. That 

 made it possible to play the detective on these six individuals, 

 and I soon found that the hours of all six were very similar, 



' Catalogue of Chiroptera, xvii., footnote, 1878. 

 2 Irish Naturalist, 190S, 101-103. 



