THE MOUNTAIN BAT.[218]
This species is an example of a small series of Bats which, although nearly allied to the preceding, are inhabitants of the Eastern hemisphere, the known species of the genus Emballonura being found in the Eastern Archipelago and Australia, and in some of the oceanic islands of the Pacific. The ears in this genus are somewhat triangular in form, with the outer margin sinuated; the tragus is truncated, slightly widened at the tip, and furnished with a small blunt projection at the base of the outer margin; the muzzle is somewhat elongated, with curved nostrils situated in a rounded pit; the interfemoral membrane is large, and stretched by long spurs. There are four incisor teeth in pairs above, and six below, and two pre-molars and three molars on each side in each jaw.
MOUNTAIN BAT.
The Mountain Bat (Emballonura monticola) is a very small creature, measuring only an inch and a half in length, with a tail nearly half an inch long, the extremity of which protrudes from the back of the interfemoral membrane. The wing-membrane springs from the ankle. The general colour of the fur is a chocolate-brown, lighter on the lower surface, the hairs being in all parts chocolate-brown at the tips. Their basal portions are yellowish-white on the back and brown on the belly. The membranes are entirely naked.
This Bat is an inhabitant of Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippine Islands, where it lives in the wildest and most solitary regions of the mountains. It is social in its habits, considerable troops of them sleeping suspended from the surfaces of perpendicular rocks, under the shade of the overhanging trees and shrubs. They are said to be unsavoury little beasts, their presence being perceptible, even at a considerable distance, by the strong and disagreeable odour with which they contaminate the air.[219]
THE TOMB BAT.[220]
SKULL OF TOMB BAT,
ENLARGED.
During the French expedition to Egypt under the first Napoleon, M. Geoffroy, one of the savants who accompanied the army, discovered a species of Bat inhabiting the tombs of the ancient kings of Egypt, which differed in many important characters from all previously known Bats. He made it the type of a new genus, to which he gave the name of Taphozous, in allusion to its tomb-haunting habits. Some other species have since been discovered in various parts of the Eastern hemisphere.