1298.—"... all over India the birds and beasts are entirely different from ours, all but ... the Quail.... For example, they have bats—I mean those birds that fly by night and have no feathers of any kind; well, their birds of this kind are as big as a goshawk!"—Marco Polo, Bk. iii. ch. 17.
c. 1328:—"There be also bats really and truly as big as kites. These birds fly nowhither by day, but only when the sun sets. Wonderful! By day they hang themselves up on trees by the feet, with their bodies downwards, and in the daytime they look just like big fruit on the tree."—Friar Jordanus, p. 19.
1555.—"On the road we occasionally saw trees whose top reached the skies, and on which one saw marvellous bats, whose wings stretched some 14 palms. But these bats were not seen on every tree."—Sidi 'Ali, 91.
[c. 1590.—Writing of the Sarkār of Kābul, 'Abul Faẓl says: "There is an animal called a flying-fox, which flies upward about the space of a yard." This is copied from Baber, and the animal meant is perhaps the flying squirrel.—Āīn, ed. Jarrett, ii. 406.
[1623.—"I saw Batts as big as Crows."—P. della Valle, Hak. Soc. i. 103.]
1813.—"The enormous bats which darken its branches frequently exceed 6 feet in length from the tip of each wing, and from their resemblance to that animal are not improperly called flying-foxes."—Forbes, Or. Mem. iii. 246; [2nd ed. ii. 269].
[1869.—"They (in Batchian) are almost the only people in the Archipelago who eat the great fruit-eating bats called by us 'flying foxes' ... they are generally cooked with abundance of spices and condiments, and are really very good eating, something like hare."—Wallace, Malay Archip., ed. 1890, p. 256.]
1882.—"... it is a common belief in some places that emigrant coolies hang with heads downward, like flying-foxes, or are ground in mills for oil."—Pioneer Mail, Dec. 13, p. 579.
FOGASS, s. A word of Port. origin used in S. India; fogaça, from fogo, 'fire,' a cake baked in embers. It is composed of minced radish with chillies, &c., used as a sort of curry, and eaten with rice.
1554.—"... fecimus iter per amoenas et non infrugiferas Bulgarorum convalles: quo fere tempore pani usu sumus subcinericio, fugacias vocant."—Busbequii Epist. i. p. 42.