NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
29 
seemed to be most acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh 
when offered; so that the notion, that bats go down chimneys and 
gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. While I amused myself 
with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times confute the vulgar 
opinion, that bats when down upon a flat surface cannot get on the 
wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, 
with more dispatch than I was aware of ; but in a most ridiculous and 
grotesque manner. 
Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they 
play over pools and streams. They love to frequent waters, not only 
PIPISTRELLE. 
LONG-EARED BAT. 
for the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are found over 
them in the greatest plenty. As I was going some years ago, pretty 
late, in a boat from Richmond to Sunbury, on a warm summer's evening, 
I think I saw myriads of bats between the two places ; the air swarmed 
with them all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at a 
time. , I am, &c. 
LETTEE XII. 
TO THE SAME. 
November, Uli, 1767. 
Sir, — It gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the falco turned 
out an uncommon one. I must confess I should have been better 
pleased to have heard that I had sent you a bird that you had never 
seen before ; but that, I find, would be a difficult task. 
I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letters, a 
young one and a female with young, both of which I have preserved in 
brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make 
no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller, 
and more slender, than the mus domesticus medius of Eay ; and have 
more of the squirrel or dormouse colour ; their belly is white, a straight 
line along their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They 
* This hawk proved to be the falco peregrinus ; a variety. 
