THE CHESTNUT MASTIFF-BAT. 
159 
the reader, I may proceed to make him acquainted 
with some of the inmates. Scores of Humming-birds 
hover from day to day around the blossoms of the 
trees, sucking from flower to flower upon the wing, 
just as the Hawkmoths do in our English gardens 
in the summer twilight, or Bees in the sunshine. A 
Hawkmoth with its long sucker exserted, and plunged 
into the corolla of a jasmine or a honeysuckle, and 
with its wings vibrating so rapidly and powerfully as 
to produce a humming noise, forms a capital repre- 
sentative of a tropical Humming-bird, if the imagina- 
tion of the observer will only supply the green and 
gold of the plumage, and the gem-like play of flash- 
ing colours on the crest and throat. I have, how- 
ever, elsewhere described in detail the manoeuvres of 
these elegant creatures around this very Malay Apple- 
tree^, and shall therefore dismiss them for denizens 
of the air of a very different character. 
THE CHESTNUT MASTIFF-BAT. 
Between the ceiling and the shingles of the roof 
certain Bats find a lodging, emerging at nightfall 
from a small hole beneath the eaves. Soon after 
sunset we hear the scrambling of little claws along 
the plaster, gradually tending towards the point 
where the hole is situated. At length, just as the 
stars begin to come out, one by one, in the sky, 
one of the boldest peeps forth his sombre face, and 
plunges down into the air, rising with expanding 
* Vide ‘ Birds of Jamaica,’ p. 92. 
