VESPERTILIO SUBULATUS. 
97 
different color, its whole body being of a very pale yellowish-brown, 
almost inclining to gray on the belly.* 
Mr. Figanierre E' Morao, Minister Plenipotentiary from Portugal 
to the United States, published, some years ago, an account of a 
colony of bats that caused him great annoyance. This paper con- 
tains so much of interest that a few pertinent extracts from it are 
here introduced : — 
“In the winter of 1859, having purchased the property known 
as Seneca Point, in the margin of the Northeast River, near 
Charlestown, in Cecil County, Maryland, we took possession of it 
in May of the next year. . . . Having been uninhabited for 
several years, it exhibited the appearance, with the exception of one 
or two rooms, of desolation and neglect. . . . The weather, 
which was beautiful, balmy and warm, invited us towards evening 
to out-door enjoyment and rest, after a fatiguing day of travel and 
active labor ; but chairs, settees, and benches were scarcely occupied 
by 11s on the piazza and lawn, when, to our amazement, and the 
horror of the female portion of our party, small black bats made 
their appearance in immense numbers, flickering around the 
premises, rushing in and out of doors and through open windows. 
Evening after evening did we patiently though not 
complacently watch this periodical exodus of dusky wings into 
light from their lurking-places. . . . Their excursions invari- 
ably commenced with the cry of the ‘whippoorwill,’ both at coming 
evening and at early dawn, and it was observed that they always 
* Concerning the number of young produced at a birth, et cetera , by Vespertilio subulatus , Dr. 
A. K. Fisher writes. “Of ten pregnant females which we examined last June, 1880, each con- 
tained two young. Prof. Burt. G. Wilder (Pop. Sci. Mo., No. 42, p. 651) examined twenty 
females in June, 1874. Each contained two little bats, though Dr. C. C. Abbott states (Geology 
of New Jersey, Appendix, p. 752), that they bring forth a litter of three to five. We consider this 
number unusual, as all the specimens examined by us never contained more nor less than two. The 
abdomen of the female is not so jtrominent, but very much broadened, a foetus developing in each 
horn of the uterus. The uterine walls at term are very thin, the entire organ weighing only about 
a centigramme. The placenta of this species is circular, measuring nine millimetres in diameter, 
the umbilical cord being twelve millimetres long. A young one taken from a female whose 
mammae contained milk, weighed 1,350 milligrammes ” (Forest and Stream, Vol. XVI, No. 25, 
July 21, 1880, p. 490.) 
