5590 Quadrupeds. 



Notes on British Bats. — Of the seven species below enumerated, six, it will be 

 observed, were taken in the house (which is only a small one) and the yard adjoining 

 to it. The Noctula, being a high-flying kind, and not, I believe, frequenting 

 buildings, T shot about one hundred yards from the house. The occurrence of so 

 many kinds in such a limited space appears to me, according to what I gather in the 

 4 Zoologist,' to be an uncommon circumstance, though perhaps it might not be so if 

 those animals did not so easily escape observation : — 



1. V. Noctula. Common. 



2. V. pipistrellus. Common. 



3. V. Nattereri. In the spring of 1855 one of this kind, together with V. barba- 

 stellus and two or three V. pipistrellus, were caught in the crevices over an open 

 archway in the buildings surrounding my stable-yard. 



4. V. barbastellus. One specimen caught as above. Last June T found a small 

 colony of six or seven in the same place: I caught two of them, and did not find the 

 others there again. 



5. V. auritus. A specimen found on a water-barrel in the stable-yard with one 

 wing injured ; another flew into the house one evening last summer. 



6. V. mystacinus. A specimen caught in the kitchen in August, 1855; another 

 in the dining-room and another in the back-yard last July, 



7. V. emarginatus, i. e. the species described under that name in Jenyn's ' Manual 

 of Vertebrate Animals,' but which, it appears, is wrongly named. A specimen of this 

 bat flew into the drawing-room window one evening in July, 1855. 



The only book of reference T have had on the subject has been the one above-named, 

 but each kind corresponds perfectly with the particular description there given of it. — 

 J. H. Jenkinson ; Dripshill, Up ton-on- Severn, February 24, 1857. 



Anecdote of a Dog. — When paying a visit the other day at a house in this neigh- 

 bourhood, I noticed the preseuce of a new inmate, a large, tail-less, rough water- 

 spaniel-looking dog, only with a snout somewhat too acuminated to belong to a 

 water-spaniel. I found there was a history to this dog: he had belonged to a lately- 

 deceased son of the person I was speaking to, and had, after his master's death, 

 shown much unwillingness to leave what had been the scene of his life and occupa- 

 tion. His master had been a butcher, and had trained his dog to watch his shop 

 for him when he himself was forced to be absent for a time. The dog was rigidly 

 faithful and honest on all such occasions; but more than this — he was customarily 

 shut up all night in the shop with the meat, and was never known to have 

 failed in the slightest degree in his honesty and abstinence. As to his tail-lessness, 

 there was no appearance of his ever having had that wonted appendage to a dog's 

 hind-quarters, a tail. Bell, in speaking of the shepherd's dog, says, " The tail, in 

 some individuals, is very short, — a peculiarity which appears to be perpetuated from 

 parents whose tails have been cut." This dog had not so much as the apology for a 

 tail which a stump or even a scar might have presented. I was, by this little narra- 

 tive, reminded of a somewhat similar, but still more remarkable, account given me by 

 the officer in the Indian army I have in a former paper referred to. He said it was 

 customary with hunters in Newfoundland when out on a hunting expedition, pre- 

 viously to setting forth on the serious business of the hunt, to leave part of their 

 equipments, &c, at some hut or shanty in the woods, under the charge of one of their 



