MURPHV AND NICHOLS: LONG ISLAND BATS. 13 
the toes with its wrists over its eyes, and little waves were crossing 
the soft fur in the morning breeze. He reached toward it cautiously, 
but its ears were quick, and suddenly dropping to the ground it lay 
with great wings spread to their fullest extent while it raised its 
impish head with mouth wide open, and chattered angrily as he 
threw his hat over it. On the way home it was active and pugna- 
cious, continually attempting to bite, but it calmed down when put 
into a box with door of fine wire mesh. In this cage, after a few^ 
branches had been introduced, it spent the greater part of the last 
six weeks of its life. 
It was an adult male, and was very fat. During the first few 
days of its incarceration it made frequent tours all over the box, 
crawling laboriously round and round the four sides, and back and 
forth across the floor- Thereafter it hung head downward on the 
wire door most of the time, but whenever the door was faced toward 
a sunny window the bat would soon crawl down, shuffle into the 
farthest corner, and lie flat on the bottom of the cage. It never 
would hang from the branching twigs tacked up for it, and when 
placed upon one of them, it would climb deliberately down, using 
its thumbs, mouth, and feet as aids, and would return to the wire 
netting- During its slumbers, which often endured for hours with- 
out sign of life, its temperature sank so low that it felt clammy ana 
dead, but on Mr- Murphy's enfolding it with his hands, respiration 
would soon become perceptible, its body would grow warm while the 
heart-beat quickened to a rapid flutter, and within a few minutes 
the little beast thus weirdly restored to activity, would shake its 
wings, blink its tiny eyes, and grasping his fingers with it thumbs, 
would gnaw his knuckles, precisely in the manner of a playful kitten. 
It never attempted to fly from the open hand even when it was 
most active. 
The coming on of evening seemed to have no efifect on rousing 
the captive to normal liveliness. In fact, on only one occasion was 
it seen moving about at night, and this was when two restless Red 
Bats had been placed in the same cage. Both Red Bats were dead 
next morning. A careful examination showed no marks of violence 
on their corpses, and no one was accused on circumstantial evidence, 
but two more Reds, placed in the cage on another date, were likewise 
dead on the morrow. 
About nine o'clock in the morning the Hoary Bat was usualh". 
though not always, active of its own accord, and at about this time of 
