FRUIT-BATS. 
2 55 
scrambling about hand-over-hand with some speed, biting each other severely, 
striking out with the long claw of the thumb, shrieking and cackling without 
intermission. Each new animal is compelled to fly several times round the tree, 
being threatened from all points, and when he eventually hooks on he has to go 
through a series of combats, and be probably ejected two or three times before he 
makes good his tenure.” 
Full accounts of this bat will also be found in Sir J. Emerson Tennent’s 
Natural History of Ceylon, although it is probable that this writer was mistaken 
in saying that its diet included insects. He observes that a favourite resort of 
these bats was some tall india-rubber trees near Kandy, in Ceylon, where they used 
to assemble in such prodigious numbers that large boughs would not unfrequently 
give way beneath the accumulated weight of the flock. It is also stated that the 
branches on which they are accustomed to roost become almost denuded of leaves, 
most of these being stripped off by the bats as they contend with one another for 
the favourite roosting-places. When suspended in the usual position, these bats 
move easily from place to place, and from branch to branch, by using each foot in 
turn, and by climbing, when occasion requires, by the aid of the claws. When 
feeding, Colonel Tickell states that the fox-bats hang by one foot only, and take 
the fruit they are about to eat in the other, seizing it by driving in their claws like 
a fork, and not by a grasping action. 
Fox-bats invariably fly singly in long files, and never in close flocks ; their 
flight being a slow, flapping, measured movement. In Calcutta the long strings of 
these bats may be seen every evening stretching across the sky from west to east, 
although the number of individuals varies considerably at different seasons of the 
year. Writing there on 23rd August 1869, Dr. John Anderson observes that “ this 
species has been flying for the last few days from the north to the south of the 
city, in immense numbers, immediately after sunset. The sky from east to west 
has been covered with them as far as the eye could reach, and all were flying with 
an evident purpose, and making for some common feeding-ground. Over a trans¬ 
verse area of two hundred and fifty yards as many as seventy bats passed overhead 
in one minute, and as they were spread over an area of great breadth, and could 
be detected in the sky on both sides as far as the eye could reach, their numbers 
were very great, but yet they continued to pass overhead for about half an hour. 
This is not the first time I have observed this habit in this species; indeed, it was 
much more markedly seen in August 1864, while I was residing in the Botanical 
Gardens, Calcutta. The sky, immediately after sunset, was covered with these bats, 
travelling in. a steady manner from west to east, and spread over a vast expanse, all 
evidently making for one common goal, and travelling, as it were, like birds of pass¬ 
age with a steady purpose. I observed them, not only on one, but both sides of the 
river. But in the Botanical Gardens I noticed that, whilst the great mass of bats 
passed on, a few were attracted by trees then in fruit, and seemed to go no further. 
This continued for a number of successive nights, but I did not observe the bats re¬ 
turning.” What occasioned these enormous assemblages has not yet been explained. 
This species of fruit-bat has an expanse of wing of about 4 feet from tip to 
tip; and it is found throughout the whole of India, Ceylon, and Burma. In the 
Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, it is, however, replaced by a 
