2S8 RHINOLOPHID/E— RHINOLOPHUS 



now appears, questionable idea that its sense of sight 

 was by no means deficient. In its habits the Lesser is not 

 known to differ from the Greater Horseshoe, but its smaller 

 size must necessarily affect its food, since it is not large enough 

 to seize the big beetles on which the latter so largely sub- 

 sists, but it is evidently powerful enough to capture moths. 

 Several naturalists have found that, in captivity at any rate, it 

 will eat the cave-spider and one or both of the cave-haunting 

 moths ; ^ and the fact that Mr Coward's captive specimens 

 more than once alighted on a table to eat mealworms lying on 

 it, taken in conjunction with that writer's observations on the 

 larger species, makes it appear almost certain that both Horse- 

 shoes may habitually feed when at rest. 



This bat is one of the commonest if not the "common bat" 

 of some parts of the west of Ireland, and one of the first printed 

 accounts of a Horseshoe bat-cave was penned in that country by 

 F. J. Foot, in 1859.^ This was supplemented by a further 

 exploration of the County Clare caves, undertaken by Foot and 

 J. R. Kinahan in 1861.^ The caves examined were all in the 

 neighbourhood of woods or plantations, and were the winter 

 habitat of certain spiders, moths, and gnats. The bats did not 

 seem to be particular as to either the height from the ground or 

 the part of the cave where they hung. They were found 

 suspended at all elevations, from those out of reach of a man to 

 within two inches of the ground. Although most frequently 

 tenanting the dark inner recesses, they were also encountered at 

 rest in broad daylight at the entrance. They were distributed 

 either singly or in companies, not, however, thickly crowded 

 together, and it was shown that their lethargy, at least in March, 

 was not so profound as to prevent them from shifting their 

 quarters. Foot supposed that their movements must be due to 

 alterations in the moisture of the cave, causing them to retreat 

 to the driest parts of it, and Kinahan thought that they might 

 feed on their insect companions. It is remarkable that of fifty- 

 four bats, carefully and separately examined, all but four were 



^ Scotosia dubitata and Gonoptera libairix. 



2 "Proc. Dublin Nat. Hist. Soc," printed in Dublin Nat. Hist. Review, vi., 379-381, 

 1859. 



^ Zoologist, 1 86 1, 7617-7624. 



