io6 



The Irish Naturalist. 



May, 



several dozens, if not scores ; so my observations are not at 

 all conclusive as to morning flight being a habit of the species, 

 as it undoubtedly is a habit of the Hairy-armed Bat, both 

 when living in colonies and when living singly^ 



Daubenton's Bat, the fourth and last Irish species to which 

 I have been able to pay attention, belongs to a different genus 

 from any of those yet touched on, so that we have nothing to 

 suggest one rule of flight as more probable for it than another, 

 unless we accept Dr. Dobson's law, according to which, as it 

 has no nasal appendages, it should be a creature of the twilight. 

 This law, however, has already broken down in the case of the 

 Pipistrelle, and it turns out to be equally misleading in the 

 case of Daubenton's Bat. I have not had the good fortune to 

 find any sleeping-places of the latter species, but luckily it can 

 be recognized on the wing with a confidence that would be 

 impossible in the case of the Pipistrelle, and it was by watch- 

 ing it in one of its known haunts near Bray, to which I was 

 introduced by Dr. Alcock, that I was able, after a large number 

 of unsuccessful attempts, to find that Daubenton's Bat is 

 another all-night flying species. 



The difficulty in the case of this Bat is not to identify but 

 to see it. Gliding as it does along the surface of the shadowed 

 water, it has to be seen against the most difficult background, 

 and I have often been surprised to find that even in moderate 

 moonlight no trace of its quaint little white-breasted figure 

 flitting up and down the stream was discernible later than an 

 hour and forty minutes after sunset. One night spent in its 

 haunts, however (that of July 2ist-22nd, 1900), taught me that 

 as soon as the same degree of light had been restored in the 

 morning, an hour and forty minutes before sunrise, Dauben- 

 ton's Bat became visible again ; wherever it had been in the 

 meantime, there it was now, passing and re-passing, an inch 

 or two above the surface of the stream, in the same rpethodical 

 way as when I had lost sight of it in the fading twilight of 



^ Mr. J Steele RUiott also states in the Zoologist for April, 1901, p, 133, that 

 he has on two occasions — in Bedfordshire and Warwickshire — seen Nodules 

 flying in the morning. I regret that I overlooked this note when 

 preparing my paper. Mr. Elliott's observations strengthen the suspicion 

 I have expressed above, that double flight may be the regular practice of 

 Ptcrygistes noctula as well as of P. Leiskri, 



