The Central Philippines. 781 
into the air. After wheeling around like spectres over our heads 
for awhile, they would approach a perch, and throwing the hind 
feet forward, would grasp it, and fall down into their accustomed 
position. After they became alarmed they would take flight at 
our approach, and they appear to see fairly well by day. A few 
shots were sufficient to fill two large baskets, and made a good 
load for a native who carried them back to town. The next day, 
while skinning them, we had frequent visits from the villagers, 
who carried off the bodies to eat. They have a strong, disagree- 
able, bat odor, but are said to be good eating. The larger spe- 
_ cies were from fifty-four to sixty inches in spread of wing, the 
smaller ones about forty. They fly to great distances in their 
search after food, leaving their roosts at dusk and returning just at 
daylight in the morning. They become a great pest to the natives, 
though they may be benefactors in disguise, by nightly visiting the 
bamboo cups in the coco trees in which the sweet juice of the flower 
stems is being collected for tuba, the beer of the country, as the 
people are fond of calling it. Sometimes the bats take this when it is 
too much fermented, and the next morning finds them rolling about 
on the ground under the coco trees instead of on their way to their 
roosts, and there they are at the mercy of any crow that wishes to 
tear holes in their wings with his beak, or of the swine that make 
a meal of them. We were brought several which were caught 
drunk. From an examination of the stomachs of those collected, 
this coco juice seems to be their chief food, and must in time have 
its influence over their anatomy. 
Having completed our work in Panay and Guimaras, we em- 
barked again on the 1st of February, and 1«unning down around 
the south end of the great island of Negros, landed at Dumaquete, 
a clean little town just opposite the southern point of Cebu, and so 
near that island that we could see the trees across the strait. The 
south end of Negros had appeared, as we passed around it, a great 
stretch of grassy plains and hills, now dry and yellow, and being 
burned over in some places. The mountains approached nearer at 
Dumaquete, and we could see forests on their heights. They were 
volcanic, and what we judged to be ancient lava streams extended 
down from a height of two or three thousand feet to near sea level 
and with such an even grade that they looked like gigantic rail 
embankments. 
