VESPERUGO NOCTIVAGANS. 
95 
hollow trees which are cut for firewood during winter. I may add 
that the season of 1880 was very backward in Maine, cold rains and 
occasional flurries of snow occurring with disagreeable frequency 
well into June.” 
The bat hunter has many difficulties to contend with. Night 
creeps upon him so insidiously that he is only made aware of its 
presence by the number of shots missed (which multiply with 
painful rapidity with the increasing darkness), and by the great 
trouble and loss of time experienced in finding the bats that fall to 
the ground. The temptation to linger as long as the bats can be 
distinctly seen is very great, but should be resisted if the hunter 
has any regard for his reputation as a wing shot. When two shots 
out of three are missed, it is time to go home. Moonlight evenings 
are also very misleading, but the novice soon learns to avoid such 
illusions. I believe that I could not average one bat for every 
dozen shots by the brightest moonlight. The greatest obstacle in 
bat shooting is the inability to calculate distance after early night- 
fall, objects invariably appearing much farther off than they really 
are. Thus, a bat is frequently fired at when supposed to be at 
proper range, when in reality it is so near that the shot have not 
time to scatter, and it is consequently either missed altogether or 
so blown to pieces as to be worthless. I have sometimes, after miss- 
ing a bat with the first barrel, brought it down with the second, when 
it seemed so far away that I was surprised to find that my gun carried 
to so great a distance. On going to pick it up I have been still more 
astonished to find it within short range, rarely over seventy-five 
feet (22.86 metres) from the spot where I had stood. This decep- 
tiveness in distance manifests itself in another embarrassing way, 
for in searching for the bat in this dim light one is almost certain to 
overestimate the distance at which it fell. Hence a well-trained 
dog, with a good nose, is of the greatest assistance. 
The length of time that the fading light will permit of bat shoot- 
ing in any single evening varies from a little over half an hour, to 
