THE BED HAIRY-TAIL. 
281 
teeth were very sharp, they were not moved with 
sufficient muscular power to penetrate the cuticle of 
my hand. The ear altered very little ; sometimes it 
was slightly wrinkled posteriorly. 
In order to discover whether it possessed cheek- 
pouches, I caught a small flesh-fly, smaller than our 
house-fly, and presented it to the Bat. He bit at it 
instantly, and thus maimed it, but it appeared much 
too large for his mouth. The fly being viviparous, 
the little maggots were escaping from the body, and 
these the Bat picked up one by one from my hand, 
and ate. At several attempts he at last got the fly 
itself dismembered, and thus devoured it piecemeal. 
He drank eagerly, on my holding him by the wings, 
and putting his nose to the water ; his mode of 
drinking was curious, he just touched the surface 
with his muzzle, and then brought up his head with 
a jerk. A drop of water would adhere to it, some- 
times projecting in a little globule as large as a pea ; 
this he sucked in by a motion of the mouth as if 
masticating very rapidly; he repeated this process 
half a dozen times before he was satisfled. We may 
infer from hence that in a state of freedom, this, and 
perhaps other Bats, drink on the wing, like swallows, 
sweeping down, and just touching the surface with 
the mouth. 
There was no appearance of cheek-pouches either 
in eating or drinking. While held, it frequently 
emitted a harsh hissing sound, with the mouth open, 
and occasionally a little peculiar “ click.” Both 
specimens were infested with numbers of a parasite 
(Nycterihius) rather large for the size of the Bat, 
