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NOTES ON OXON BATS. 
(c). Habits during Repose .—When the blush of early morning tinges 
the sky, the bat retires to its seclusion in the hollow trees or ruined 
buildings, there to await the approach of night. If one of these 
haunts be discovered, you will find the bats all hanging downwards in 
a great cluster, probably for the sake of warmth, forming a shapeless 
mass of black skin and brown fur. The smell of these domiciles is 
absolutely pestilential, due more to the accumulation of excrement at 
the bottom of their haunt than the actual smell of the bats them¬ 
selves. I generally find that the trees are monopolised by the great 
bats, of which the other sorts are rather afraid, while the common bat 
delights in slated roofs, and the whiskered and long-eared bats keep to 
the chinks and crevices of old barns and ruins, generally congregating 
in clusters, but sometimes living solitary. 
II, —The Common Bat. 
(a). General. —The common bat frequents lanes, gardens, and the 
sides of woods, because small insects abound most in such places. 
Its dark brown fur is liable to considerable variation, the male being 
usually rather smaller and more brightly coloured than the other sex. 
{h). Capture .—The pipistrelle is devoid of fear, and will charge a 
stick or an umbrella with the greatest perseverance, returning again 
and again until it is cut down. I have taken a great number with a 
common butterfly net—as many as seven in an evening. 
(c). Habits in Confinement. —Pipistrelles are easily tamed, and 
appear to be quite at home if suffered to fly at large in a room where 
there are plenty of flies. I have had many a one during the summer 
months, one of which used to live under an old hat hanging on the 
kitchen wall. Though the doors were almost always open, it never 
strayed far away. About the middle of the day it used to come out 
and hawk for flies (which were generally on the qui vive about that 
time), darting into the swarms of flies which rose from the floor or 
table, and never failing to secure one. I have tried to observe how 
this feat was performed, but that was always a very difficult matter 
to decide, from the celerity of the operation. So far, however, as I 
could judge, the bat struck the fly a blow with its wing, which dis¬ 
abled it, and then seized it before it reached the ground, using its tail 
as a basket until it had obtained a firm hold. 
III. — The Gbeat Bat. 
(a). General. —In its trait of flying at a greater elevation than that 
adopted by the other species, the noctule is very swift-like, hunting in 
the same region of air as Cgpselus apnis, continually uttering its shrill 
quarrelsome cry. 
The noctule feeds chiefly on Coleoptera, e.g., on Dor beetles, cock¬ 
chafers, and other crepuscular insects which are always captured on 
the wing. It is very hard to say how this is effected. I have sus¬ 
pended a cockchafer from a fishing-rod, where the noctules were 
flying, in order to solve the problem. The tail of the great bat is 
