The Hairy-armed Bat (Vesperugo Leisleri) also for a long time founded its claim to be regarded as a British species upon a single specimen, but of late years it has occurred at several localities in the midland counties of England and in Ireland. It is a little smaller than the preceding species, the head and body measuring only two inches and a half in length, and is characterised especially by having a broad band of hair upon the wing-membrane along the whole course of the fore-arm. The fur is bright chestnut above and brownish-grey on the under surface. It is found generally about villages, and appears to take up its residence in buildings. On the continent it seems to be pretty generally distributed, and it extends, like the preceding species, over the temperate parts of Asia. Specimens have also been brought from the Azores and Madeira, and it is believed to live in Algeria.
Several other species of this genus have an almost equally wide range. Thus one that may be called the Negro Bat (Vesperugo maurus) is found along the whole of the great axis of elevation of the Old World from the Pyrenees into China, and even extends southwards into India, Cochin China, and Java. This species has a sooty-brown or deep-black fur, with the tips of the hairs greyish. Kuhl’s Bat (Vesperugo Kuhlii) is found throughout India, and in Persia and Southern Europe, to Madeira. It is rather a small species, about an inch and three-quarters long, with black fur, tipped for one-fourth of its length above with yellowish-brown or dun-colour, and beneath with ash-colour. Another species, Nilsson’s Bat (Vesperugo borealis), which has the highest northern range of any species of the order, stretches right across the old continent, from Scandinavia and Germany as far south as the Hartz Mountains, to the Altai Mountains and North China. This species has a dark-brown fur, tipped with yellowish-brown above and with ash-colour beneath. It is about two inches long.
THE COROMANDEL BAT.[192]
Besides the preceding, which are common to Europe, there are a good many purely Asiatic species, mostly belonging to the Indian region and its islands. Mr. Dobson enumerates eighteen such species, the most generally distributed of which is the Coromandel Bat (Vesperugo abramus), which appears to represent in the southern parts of Asia the Pipistrelle of the more temperate regions. It is rather larger than the Pipistrelle, measuring an inch and three-quarters in length, and the outer margin of the ears is straight, or very slightly concave; the fur is dark-brown, tipped with light yellowish-brown above, and sooty-brown with pale tips beneath, and the head, face, and neck are yellowish-brown. This species is common in India and Ceylon, and extends thence through China to Japan, occurring also in several islands of the Eastern Archipelago.
Mr. Swinhoe says that it is a common house Bat at Nagasaki, in Japan. He also found it abundantly in Hainan, and, treating it as the common Chinese Bat, quotes the description of the Bat from the Chinese Gazetteer, in which, as is usual with Chinese writers, the animal is classed with birds. This choice description is as follows:—“Peenfoo, or Bat, shaped like a Mouse, has thin flesh-wings uniting the four legs, and extending to the tail. In winter stows away; in summer comes out. In daytime lies prostrate; in night flies. One name for it is Foo-yeh, or Belly-wings. It is now called Feishoo, or Flying Mouse.”
THE THICK-FOOTED BAT.[193]
In this species, which inhabits Northern India, Tenasserim, the Andaman and Philippine Islands, and the Islands of Java and Sumatra, the bases of the thumbs and the soles of the feet are furnished with broad, fleshy pads, which on the feet form nearly circular discs, and are doubtless organs of adhesion, analogous to the more perfect sucking discs present in an American member of the family (Thyroptera tricolor). These organs probably assist the Bat in clinging to the under surfaces of large leaves and fruit, a habit which is common to many tropical species of Bats. It is remarkable that in this species, as in the Thyroptera, the claws on both the thumbs and the toes, although acute, are very small.
The Thick-footed Bat is about an inch and three-quarters in length of body, with a tail an inch and a quarter long. It is covered with a fine, dense, and moderately long fur, of a bright reddish-brown colour above, paler beneath. There is only one pre-molar on each side in the upper and two in the lower jaw, and this character, with the presence of the foot-pads, serves to distinguish the sub-genus Tylonycteris of Professor Peters, to which this species belongs.[194]