. Cassell's natural history. Animals; Animal behavior. THE FRUGirOROUS BATS. appendages, the tail sliort or altogether deficient, the interfemoral memljrane, or the membrane between the legs, which in our ordinary Bats encloses the tail, reduced to very small dimensions, and the molar teeth furnished with flattish crowis, along the middle of which runs a longitudinal furrow (figured below). The free thumb is long, and armed with a strong hooked claw, and the fii-st, or index finger, in nearly all the species, is also terminated by a claw. The .species of Frugivorous Bats, of which about sevent
. Cassell's natural history. Animals; Animal behavior. THE FRUGirOROUS BATS. appendages, the tail sliort or altogether deficient, the interfemoral memljrane, or the membrane between the legs, which in our ordinary Bats encloses the tail, reduced to very small dimensions, and the molar teeth furnished with flattish crowis, along the middle of which runs a longitudinal furrow (figured below). The free thumb is long, and armed with a strong hooked claw, and the fii-st, or index finger, in nearly all the species, is also terminated by a claw. The .species of Frugivorous Bats, of which about seventy have Ijeen described, agree very closely in their general characters, and constitute a single ftimily, to which the name of Pteropidce has been given, derived from that of the oldest and most extensive of its genera, Pterojms (wing-foot). They are distributed all over the warmer parts of the Eastern hemisphere and the islands of the Pacific. Wherever they occur, they present nearly the same form, and generally a very similar .style of colora- tion, whilst in their diet they stick most religiously to fruits, for although some have been fovmd in captivity to feed on the flesh of bii-ds and rats, and others are charged with catching and eatin" fish, in the former case some allowance must be made for the artificial condition of the animal, which probably produced a morbid appetite, heightened by the fact that the supply of his natural food had been exhausted; and the second statement seems to rest exclusively on the observed fact of these Bats on leaving theii- roosts at sunset skimming close over the surface of water, and sometimes even dipping into it; but the object of these evolutions, as remarked by Mr. Dobson, " is probably, in the first instance, to drink, and, secondly, to rid themselves of some of the numerous parasites with which they are commonly in- ; Sir- James Emerson Tennent, however, says of the Ceylonese sjiecies, that " insects, caterp
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