54 
NATURE NOTES 
NATURAL HISTORY NOTES AND QUERIES. 
Bats in Winter. — Last month I wrote in N.aturk Notks that I had 
observed a bat in the dusk of the evening of December 8. I should like to add 
that on December 26 I observed two bats hawking for insects in Westgate, 
I’eterborough, in the dusk of the evening. The question arises whether these 
bats had been torpid. I have an impression that generally when bats are observed 
in winter, it is more in the daytime when the temperature is highest. I find I 
have an entry under January 28, 1898, of a bat being seen by myself, but unfor- 
tunately I have not stated the time of day. 
Broadway, Peterlwrough. W. H. Bernard Saunders. 
How Rats carry Eggs. — Does it ever occur to those who believe 
that a rat is content to lie on his back with an egg in his paws, and to be dragged 
along like a little truck in order to convey the egg to its destination, that this 
would be painful for the small conveyance ? It would involve that rubbing up 
the hair the wrong way which is always recognised as an irritating process for 
man or beast. The belief is a very old one ; but has any one seen the feat 
actually being performed ? 
7, Holmesdale Road, Kexu. Em.MA IIubb.\rd. 
February 8, 1901. 
The venerable “chestnut,” a rat doing wheelbarrow, and allowing himself 
to be made a vehicle for the transport of an egg, is, to my personal knowledge, 
quite eighty years old. I remember reading it when a small boy ! 
How the rat moves the egg I am not prepared to say ; but //he does move it, 
I would suggest that he does so by pushing it along with his snout. 
George Roofer. 
P.S. — Crows and rooks carry eggs away by striking the lower mandible of the 
beak through the shell and closing the upper mandible gently on it. The rat, 
however, could not adopt any similar plan, his teeth being too sharp and his 
mouth too small. 
Nascott House, Watford. 
February 7, 1901. 
Moles. — A good many years ago 1 saw a dachshund try to catch a mole. 
Your dachshund is a pretty good digger, but the mole dug himself in much faster 
than the dachshund could lollow. I have twice had the luck to find a mole 
crossing a hard road or path, where he is helpless. The squirming of a live mole 
in one’s hand is out of all proportion to the animal’s size, and proves its e.vtra- 
ordinary muscular strength. 
Lonaon, February ii. F. Pollock. 
Would you, or one of your readers, be so kind as to tell me exactly in what 
manner, and by what method, a mole forms a molehill. 
Cornwood Vicarage, A- T. Mundy. 
Foybridge, Devon. 
fantiary 20, 1901. 
Hedg’ehog and Mole. — Will any one tell me if it is an authenticated fact 
that the hedgehog is valuable as a destroyer of the sometimes too numerous mole ? 
I saw a statement to that effect not long ago in one of the daily papers. In 
reading the letters in N.\ture Notes on Moles, I recalled one or two occasions 
on which I saw these animals above ground. Once the little grey beast scuttled 
across my path on Hampstead Heath and disappeared like lightning on reaching 
the sand and turf at the side. 
E. G. W. 
How to attract Tits. — In answer to the above question from “ E. C. R.,” 
I can say I have found them come very' quickly to either a lump of suet, small 
meaty bone, or a cocoanut. The latter is what I prefer, as it lasts longer and 
looks much better than the bone. One now hangs from the branch of a small 
