Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/240

212 tioned buck hare, weighing, I should suppose, some seven or eight pounds.

Mr. Carr's groom was standing by the stable door, as I came up with the hare in my hand. Here, John, said I, take this to your own house, and get your wife to dress it for your family;—it is none the worse for being killed on Easter Sunday:—and then I told him how it had come into my possession. He thanked me kindly for it; and I learnt from Mr. Carr at the end of the week, that John's wife had made it into a pie, with the addition of a few rashers of bacon;—that it proved to be uncommonly good;—and that they would all remember, for many years to come, the fight betwixt the two hares in the park at Walton Hall, on Easter Sunday afternoon, the 16th of April, 1843.

Walton Hall, May, 1843.

Anecdotes of Bats flying by day-light. Thinking it possible that additional instances of bats flying by day-light (Zool. 7, 35, 87) may be acceptable to the readers of 'The Zoologist,' I beg to state that on Sunday, the 4th of December last, between 2 and 3 o'clock in the afternoon, I observed a bat flying about our garden, as briskly as if it had been a summer's evening. The day was sunshiny and cloudless, and so warm that I was sitting out of doors at the time. The other instance I have to mention occurred at the village of Langar, in Nottinghamshire, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the 6th of October, 1840. I was sitting sketching by the side of a pool of water, when I was visited by a bat, which flew repeatedly over the surface of the water, now and then dipping in its mouth, either to take a sip or catch an insect, I could not be certain which.—Anna Worsley; Bristlington near Bristol, May, 1843.

Note on the Piscivorous Habits of the Brown Rat. I have not the slightest doubt that the Rev. Mr. Banister was correct in his observation of the attack of an eel upon a rat (Zool. 108), nevertheless it is not always the case that the rat is the preyed upon in encounters with the finny inhabitants of our streams. In February last, as some rat-catchers were pursuing their calling in an old warehouse, whose foundation is washed by the waters of the Trent, near our town, they opened several burrows of the common brown rat (Mus decumanus), and found half-eaten remains of the river lampern (Petromyzon fluviatilis) quite fresh, and which had evidently been captured and drawn in by rats. About the same time a small potato-ground, close to the same warehouse, was turned over by the spade in course of cultivation, and a large hole was laid bare, in which were found upwards of twenty full-sized lamperns, some fresh and others very stale, but all partly eaten;—the head and region about the breathing holes being the parts preferred by the gluttonous occupants of the hole. I much wish we had on record a good observation relative to the mode in which the rat captures and secures so slippery and powerful a prey. It must be a most amusing sight to see the rat enveloped in the folds of the writhing lampern, rolling over and over at the bottom of the stream, until its powerful bite has reached a vital part.—Edwin Brown; Burton-on-Trent, May, 1843.