NOTES AND QUERIES. 329 



Barbastelle in Gloucestershire. — A female specimen of this bat was 

 sent me by Mr. C. Watkins, of Painswick, it having flown into the room 

 of a house in Stroud during the first week in August. — H. Charbonnier 

 (7, Triangle, Clifton, Bristol). 



[The only Bats mentioned in Mr. Witchell's lately published ' Fauna 

 of Gloucestershire,' of which we hope shortly to give a notice, are the 

 Noctule, Pipistrelle, Natterer's Bat, "Whiskered, Long-eared, and the two 

 Horseshoe Bats. It is curious that the additional species now recorded 

 should have turned up in the town in which the author of the ' Fauna ' 

 resides. — Ed.] 



Hairy-armed Bat in Yorkshire.— During the months of May and 

 June, 1890, 1 obtained several specimens of the Hairy-armed Bat, Vesperugo 

 leisleri, which were shot on the wing at Mexborough. One of the specimens 

 is now in the British Museum. — H. Charbonnier (7, Triangle, Clifton, 

 Bristol). 



[It appears from Messrs. Clarke and Roebuck's ' Handbook of the 

 Vertebrate Fauna of Yorkshire,' that only one occurrence of this bat in 

 that county was known to them at the date of publication, 1881. It would 

 be of interest if our correspondent would point out in what respects the 

 specimens procured by him differ from the young of the Noctule with which 

 V. leisleri has before now been confounded. — Ed.] 



Black Variety of the Water Vole in Northumberland.— It appears 

 from Messrs. Aplin and Macpherson's paper on this variety of the Water 

 Vole (p. 247) that it has not yet been reported from Northumberland. 

 I spent a fortnight last May at Harbottle, in Upper Coquetdale. Whilst 

 walking by the river one evening with a keeper, on the look out for an 

 Otter, our attention was attracted by a Water Rat. Without any remark 

 on my part, my companion inquired, " Do you see Black Water Rats in 

 Nottinghamshire?" On my informing him that occasionally I had seen 

 them, he told me that he frequently saw them when fly-fishing in the 

 Coquet. After that I kept a look out, and was rewarded by seeing a very 

 black specimen at a place called Shilmoor, several miles higher up the 

 river, a day or two later. This specimen dived into a deep pool of the peat- 

 coloured water, and I was much struck by its instantaneous disappearance 

 from sight, though the water was clear, the dark colour of the fur making the 

 animal invisible when only a few inches under water. — F. B. Whitlock 

 (Beeston, Notts). 



Bank Vole breeding in Confinement.— At the end of last March 

 I received about a dozen specimens of the Bank Vole, Arvicola glareolus, 

 from Haresfoot Farm, near Berkhampstead. They were found by the 

 labourers in a large nest made of dry grass in a heap of mangels. There 

 were a good many of them, and those sent me were caught alive by the men 



ZOOLOGIST. — SEPT. 1892. 2 F 



