224 
NATURE NOTES. 
BATS. 
HE following observations on the common bat and the 
long-eared bat are collected from notes that I have 
occasionally set down, on the habits of about a dozen 
bats that I have kept at various times. 
The longest time that any one of my bats has lived is about 
eight months. One caught in September, 1891, lived until April 
23rd of the following year. I have had very few opportunities of 
observing their habits during the summer months. 
During the spring of 1878, when I was at school, I kept a 
diary, in which I noted the first appearance of flowers, birds, &c., 
and such like events of the natural year. I find in it a record of 
bats caught during the first week of June. I remember that 
with brown paper we smoked them out of a hole in the brickwork 
above the hall door, where the beam of the porch roof runs into 
the wall. As they flew out we caught them with butterfly nets 
in the porch. I think we must have caught eight or ten in that 
way. I had four for my share. We fed them on flies, which 
some of the bats took readily from our fingers, others we could 
not induce to feed. 
Birth. — My diary records the birth of a bat on the nth of 
June, of another on the 13th ; the death of one of these on the 
1 8th, and of two bats, presumably the mothers, on the 19th 
and 20th. 
Here the entries cease. But I recollect that most of the 
bats gave birth to young — never more than one ; that none 
of thh mothers paid any attention to their offspring, but left 
them hanging head downwards on the sticks that we had put 
in the box for perches ; that in spite of our efforts to feed them 
with milk on a feather, all the young bats died within two or 
three days of their birth, and that the mothers did not live for 
more than a week or fortnight afterwards. I made a drawing of 
one of the bats on the day of its birth. It is about an inch 
from foot to head. It hangs in much the same position as a 
full grown bat (apparently by one foot only) ; the head is large, 
the wings quite small and feeble ; the thumb hook very large in 
proportion to the wing. From the fact that the bats lived some 
days after they were born I conclude that they were not born 
prematurely. If that were so, it would seem, from the feeble- 
ness of its wings, that a long time must elapse before the young 
bat is able to fly. Whether the mother suckles her young until 
it is able to fend for itself, or whether, after it is weaned, she 
catches flies and feeds it, is a point on which I have not been 
able to gather any information. 
Of my four bats one, a male I think, survived, and after 
several weeks made its escape. Some of these bats would eat 
blackbeetles ; but none of the bats that I have kept since would 
touch them. 
