I9t4- 
Bf.sso'S. — Our Irish Warblers. 
153 
I have heard it every year since when on my summer 
hoHday, and have often wondered that it has failed to cross 
our " silver streak of sea," and add another to Britain's 
deHghtful company of warblers. 
The voices of boys and of birds have always had an 
inexpressible charm for me. And whenever I have listened 
in England and elsewhere to the Nightingale, or at home 
to the Blackbird and Willow Warbler, the words of " rare 
old Izaak " occur to my mind : — " Lord, what music hast 
thou pro\dded for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest 
bad men such music on earth ! " 
Balbriggun. 
THE LESSER HORSE-SHOE BAT. 
A NOTE ON THE NUMERICAL RATIO OF THE TWO SEXES. 
BY C. B. MOFFAT, B.A., M.R.I. A. 
There is a singular point in the natural history of the 
Lesser Horse-shoe Bat on which, as the late Major Barrett- 
Hamilton in his work on British Mammals shows, Irish and 
English observers of this local species seem to be in complete 
agreement, and which yet needs to be looked at with a 
sceptical eye in view of the surprising consequences to which 
its acceptance would point. This is the remarkable dis- 
proportion that seems to exist in the numbers of the sexes. 
Foot and Kinahan, exploring the Clare caves inhabited 
by these bats in 1861, collected fifty-four specimens, of 
which fifty were males and four females. Similarly, of 
twenty specimens examined by Foot in 1859, nineteen 
were males and only one was a female. In the Cefn Cave, 
near Denbigh, ^lessrs. Oldham and Coward collected fourteen, 
and of these twelve were males and two females. In 
Devonshire, Mr. E. HolHs, by searching limestone rocks in 
a number of different localities, obtained six specimens, and 
of these five were males. All the evidence apparently 
A 2 
