THE LESSER HORSESHOE BAT 253 



Dorset. North of 51° 30' north latitude its numbers become uncertain, 

 and, although stated by Tomes to be not rare at Cirencester, Char- 

 bonnier and Lloyd Morgan report it as scarce at Bristol, and seldom 

 obtained north of the Avon. I know of no records either for Oxford 

 or Buckingham, and of one only for Berkshire (Cocks, Journ. cit., 1906, 

 186); so that the bat is practically unknown from Cirencester eastwards 

 to the North Sea. 



The species is, however, by no means entirely southern in its 

 distribution, since it appears again across the Bristol Channel in 

 Monmouth, where Donovan found it at Raglan Castle in 1802, and 

 thence it is widely distributed to the extreme north of Wales and in the 

 north-east to Ripon in Yorkshire, but is rare or absent from the central 

 English counties south of the Wash. The details are worth noting : — It 

 has been found by Storrie at Bridgend in Glamorgan (Kelsall); by 

 Tracy frequently at Stackpoole (Kelsall) ; by Proger (specimen sent to 

 Forrest) at St David's in Pembroke; by Lingwood at Sufton {Ann. 

 and Mag. Nat. Hist., May 1840, 185); by Wallis near Ross {Trans. 

 Newcastle-on-Tyne Nat. Hist. Soc, xi., 243, 1894); and by Hewitt, 

 who sent a specimen from Ledbury; all in Hereford. It has been 

 noticed sparingly in many parts of Merioneth by Caton Haigh, 

 who believes it to be generally distributed in North Wales 

 {Zoologist, 1887, 152). Further north, Oldham has detected it in 

 Carnarvon {Journ. cit., 1903,430) ; and Newstead, Caton Haigh, Oldham 

 and Coward in Denbigh and Flint {Journ. cit., 1887, 152; 1896, 255 ; 

 1897. 537-538; 1906, 70-71). Towards the east there is only one 

 known Shropshire specimen, that in the Worcester Museum ; it flew 

 into Steele Elliott's house at Dowles on the Worcester county border on 

 6th July 1904 {Journ. cit., 1905, 308); Coward, however, found it in the 

 Ceiriog Valley in Denbigh, four miles from the Shropshire border, in 

 1900. Tomes rates it as by no means rare in Worcester, and local 

 rather than rare in Warwick ; Millais has examined a single Stafford 

 specimen, and Hardy one from Edwinstowe, Nottingham (Kelsall), 

 while Cheshire has one very doubtful record, dating from 1834 

 (Coward and Oldham). In Derby it is found in fair numbers, chiefly 

 in limestone caverns and old lead workings at Matlock, and in the 

 surrounding country even as far as the Peak district. It appears 

 to be absent from the Trent valley and the basin of the lower Dove 

 (Jourdain). In Yorkshire it was discovered by James Ingleby, 

 from whom, in January 1876, Laver received specimens taken near 

 Eavestone, Ripon (Roebuck, Zoologist, 1882, 186); Storey has also 

 reported it from near Pateley Bridge in Nidderdale (see Field, 12th 

 April 1884, 499; Naturalist, 1886, 339; Zoologist, 1895, 65), but a 

 statement that it is the " prevailing species " in a locality so near the 

 northern extremity of its range has not been corroborated, and would 



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