Bats drink on the wing, like swallows, by sipping the surface, as they play over pools and streams. They

ment. They were originally given to me as a commentary on the statement in the text; but were subsequently communicated, at my request, to the Zoological Society at its meeting on November 11, 1834.

"In July, 1833," Mr. Daniell says, "I received five specimens of the pipistrelle bat from Elvetham, Hants; all of which were pregnant females. There were many more congregated with them in the ruins of the barn in which they were taken; but the rest escaped. They were brought to me in a tin powder canister, in which they had been kept for several days; and on turning them loose into a common packing-case with a few strips of deal nailed over its front to form a cage, they pleased me much by the great activity which they displayed in the larger space into which they had been introduced; progressing rapidly along the bottom of the box, ascending by the bars to the top, and then throwing themselves off as if endeavouring to fly. I caught some flies and offered one of them to one of the bats, which seized it with the greatest eagerness, and devoured it greedily, and then thrust its nose repeatedly through the bars, with its jaws extended, closing them from time to time with a snap, and evincing the utmost anxiety to obtain an additional supply of this agreeable food. The flies were then offered to the whole of them, and the same ravenous disposition was displayed; all the bats crowding together at the end of the box at which they were fed, and crawling over, snapping at, and biting each other, like so many curs, uttering at the same time a disagreeable grating squeak. I soon found that my pets were so hungry as to require more time to be expended in fly-catching than I was disposed to devote to them; and I then tried to feed them with cooked meat: but this they rejected. Raw beef was, however, eaten with avidity; and an evident preference was given to those pieces which had been moistened with water. The feeding with beef answered exceedingly well, two objects being gained by it: the bats were enabled to feed without assistance; and my curiosity was gratified by observing them catching flies for themselves.

"A slice of beef attached to the side of the box in which they were kept not only spared me the trouble of feeding them, but also, by attracting the flies, afforded good sport in observing the animals obtain their own food by this new kind of bat-fowling. The weather being warm, many blue-bottle flies were attracted by the meat; and, on one of these approaching within range of the bats' wings, it was sure to be struck down by their action, the animal itself falling at the same instant with all its membranes expanded, cowering over the devoted fly, with its head thrust under them in order to secure its prey. When the head was again drawn forth, the membranes were immediately closed, and the fly was observed to be almost invariably taken by the head. The act of deglutition was a laboured operation: the mastication consisting of a succession of eager bites or snaps; and the sucking process, if I may so term it, by which the insect was drawn into the mouth, being greatly assisted by the loose lips of the animal. Several minutes were usually

love to frequent waters, not only for the sake of drinking, but on account of insects, which are found over

occupied in swallowing a large fly. Those which I offered, in the first instance, were eaten entire; but I subsequently observed detached wings in the bottom of the box in which the bats were kept: I never, however, observed the rejection of the wings by the bats, and am inclined to think that they are generally swallowed. The olfactory nerves of the pipistrelle are acutely sensible, readily distinguishing between an insect and a bit of beef; for when one of them has been hanging at rest, attached by its hinder extremities to one of the bars in the front of its cage, I have frequently placed a small piece of beef within a short distance of its nose, but the beef has always been disregarded; when, on the other hand, I have put a fly in the same situation, the bat instantly commenced snapping after it. They would eat the beef when they were hungry; but they never refused a fly,

"In the day time they sometimes clustered together in a corner of the cage. Towards evening they became very lively, and gave rapid utterance to their harsh, creaking notes. The longest survivor of them died after a captivity of nineteen days.

"My intimate acquaintance with the noctule bat, the species of which Gilbert White appears to have been the first English observer, and for which he indicated the specific name altivolans, commenced on the 16th of May, 1834. I obtained on that day from Hertfordshire five specimens, four of which were pregnant females. The fifth individual, a male, was exceedingly restless and savage from the first; biting the females, and breaking his teeth against the wires of the cage in his attempts to escape from his place of confinement. He rejected all food, and died on the 18th. Up to this time the remaining four had continued sulky; but towards the evening they ate a few small pieces of raw beef, in preference to flies, beetles, or gentles, all of which were offered to them: only one, however, fed kindly. On the 20th one died; and on the 22nd, two others. The survivor was tried with a variety of food, for I was anxious to preserve her as long as possible; and as she evinced a decided preference for the hearts, livers, &c. of fowls, she was fed constantly upon them. Occasionally I offered to her large flies, but they were always rejected; although one or two May chafers placed within her reach were partially eaten. In taking the food the wings are not thrown forward in the manner of the pipistrelle, as if to surround a victim and prevent its escape; the action of the noctule in seizing the meat was similar to that of a dog. The appetite was sometimes voracious; the quantity eaten exceeding half an ounce, although the weight of the animal was no more than ten drachms. It was in the evening that it came down to its food: throughout the day it remained suspended by its hinder extremities at the top of the cage. It lapped the water that drained from the food, and in this, no less than in its manner of feeding, there was a marked distinction between the noctule and the pipistrelle: the latter in drinking raises its head. The animal evidently became quite reconciled to her new position. She took considerable pains in

them in the greatest plenty. As I was going some years ago, pretty late, in a boat from Richmond 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. I am, &c.

SIR,

LETTER XII.

TO THE SAME.

November 4, 1767.

Ir gave me no small satisfaction to hear that the Falco1 turned out an uncommon one. I must confess I should

cleaning herself, using the claws of the posterior extremities as a comb, parting with them the hair on either side from the head to the tail, and forming a straight line down the middle of the back: the membrane of the wings was cleaned by forcing the nose through the folds, and thereby expanding them.

"On the 23rd of June a young one was born, exceeding in size a newly born mouse; and having, from its birth, considerable power in its hind legs and claws, by the aid of which it clung strongly to its dam or to the deal sides of the cage. It was nestled so closely within the folds of the membranes as to prevent any observation of the process of suckling. The dam was exceedingly careful of it on the next day also, and was observed to shift it from side to side to suckle it, keeping it still folded in the membranes of the wings: on these occasions her usual position was reversed. In the evening she was found to be dead; but the young one was still alive. It took milk from a sponge, and was kept carefully wrapped up in flannel; and by these attentions was preserved for eight days, at the end of which period it died. Its eyes were not then opened, and it had acquired very little hair."-G. D.

With the preceding notes Mr. Daniell also communicated to the Zoological Society some other particulars respecting the female noctule, which were published in the Proceedings of that body for 1834. These are less adapted to the general, than to the scientific, reader.

It would seem probable, from the account given in the text of its manner of feeding, that the tame bat observed by our author was the pipistrelle a bat which he and British zoologists generally, until very recently, confounded with Vespertilio murinus; one of the most common, with one of the rarest of the English species.-E. T. B.

I This hawk proved to be the Falco peregrinus; a variety. [“It was a variety that differed from our falcon in having the whole

have been better pleased to have heard that I had sent you a bird that you had never seen before; but that, I find, would be a difficult task 2.

I have procured some of the mice mentioned in my former letter3, a young one and a female with young,

both of which I have preserved in brandy. From the colour, shape, size, and manner of nesting, I make no doubt but that the species is nondescript. They are much smaller, and more slender, than the Mus domesticus medius of Ray; and have more of the squirrel or dormouse colour; their belly is white; a straight line along

under side of the body of a dirty deep yellow; but the black bars were the same in both." Pennant, Brit. Zool., 1768, p. 560.]

The Falco peregrinus, sent by Mr. White to Mr. Pennant, is a rare bird. One of them was caught some years ago in Norfolk, in a trap baited with a woodcock. Another was killed in January, 1812 (this present month), in Sussex, while fighting with a raven. This falcon breeds in Glenmore, and other rocks in the Highlands. See Pennant's Scotland, vol. i. p. 277. -MITFORD.

2 The specimen of the peregrine falcon mentioned in the text was killed in Faringdon, the parish adjoining on the north-west to Selborne. Another individual, shot at a much later period, on Wolmer Forest, is described in Letter LVII. to Daines Barrington.-E. T. B.

[Letter X.]

their sides divides the shades of their back and belly. They never enter into houses; are carried into ricks and barns with the sheaves; abound in harvest; and build their nests amidst the straws of the corn above the ground, and sometimes in thistles. They breed as many as eight at a litter, in a little round nest composed of the blades of grass or wheat*.

One of these nests I procured this autumn, most artificially platted, and composed of the blades of wheat; perfectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball; with the aperture so ingeniously closed, that there was no discovering to what part it belonged. It was so compact and well filled, that it would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked and blind. As this nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively so as to administer a teat to each? Perhaps she opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the business is over: but she could not possibly be contained herself in the ball with her young, which moreover would be daily increasing in bulk. This wonderful "procreant cradle," an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a wheat field suspended in the head of a thistle5.

I took up one of these little mice in a stubble field in Hampshire, in September, and put it into a cage. The next morning it had produced six young ones, and a few hours after, it had eaten them all up.-W. H.

Zoology is indebted to Gilbert White for the addition to its stores of the curious little mouse above referred to, which both by its minuteness and by the singularity of its habits, is well adapted to attract attention. The notice in the text is the first account that was given of it, and the particulars there recorded, with the additional information contained in some of the subsequent Letters, constituted for many years the whole stock of our knowledge respecting it. Pennant, to whom the facts relating to it were communicated, inserted it immediately in an Appendix to the earliest octavo edition of his British Zoology; describing it as the less long-tailed field mouse, and acknowledging himself indebted for his acquaintance with it to Gilbert White, whose account of it he published almost entire. Other zoologists were contented with copying what Pennant had printed; with the exception of Pallas, who, ten years later, appears to have described it under the