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1 . 
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 29 
The house-martins have eggs still, and squab young. The 
last swift I observed was about the 21st August: it was a 
straggler. 
Redstarts, fly-catchers, and white-throats still appear : but I. 
have seen no black-caps lately. 
I forgot to mention that I once saw, in Christ Church College 
quadrangle in Oxford, on a very sunny warm morning, a house- 
martin flying about, and settling on the parapet, so late as the 
20th November. 
I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which 
would take flies out of a person’s hand. If you gave it any- 
thing to eat, it brought its wings round before the mouth, 
hovering and hiding its head in the manner of birds of prey 
when they feed. The adroitness it showed in shearing off the 
' wings of flies, which were always rejected, was worthy of ob- 
servation, and pleased me much. Insects seemed to be most 
acceptable, though it did not refuse raw flesh when offered ; 
so that the notion that bats go down chimneys and gnaw 
men’s bacon seems no improbable story. While I amused 
myself with this wonderful quadruped, I saw it several times 
confute the vulgar opinion, that bats when down upon a flat 
surface cannot get on the wing again, by rising with great 
ease from the floor. It ran, I observed, with more dispatch 
than I was aware of ; but in a most ridiculous and grotesque 
manner. 
Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, 
as they play over pools and streams. ‘They love to frequent 
waters, not only for the sake of drinking, but on account of 
insects, which are found over them in the greatest plenty. As 
I was going some years ago, pretty late, in a boat from Rich- 
mond to Sunbury, on a warm summer’s evening, I think I saw 
myriads of bats between the two places ; the air swarmed with 
them all along the Thames, so that hundreds were in sight at 
a time. 
