Page:The Zoologist, 1st series, vol 1 (1843).djvu/34

6 was the destined denizen of still severer climes. Nature ever adapts her creatures to the circumstances under which she has chosen to place them.

Cuvier has recorded his opinion that the mammoth was specifically distinct from either of the existing elephants, and has named it Elephus primigenius. The principal differences which he points out are these: the tusks are longer, more curved, and towards the extremity have an inclination outwards; the alveoli in which they are placed are larger and more produced; the neck is shorter, the bones altogether stronger, and the body thickly covered with hair. In a drawing, professedly made on the spot and sent to St. Petersburgh, the animal was represented without a trunk, with pointed erect ears, and a bristly upright mane; but the inferences drawn from the parts now remaining militate against the correctness of this drawing, and must be received in preference to a production which, from the mutilated state of the carcass, must necessarily have been indebted to the imagination of the draughtsman for some of its details.

Note on the occurrence of Bats at Epping. The Barbastelle bat (Plecotus Barbastellus), I am inclined to believe, is not uncommon in the Forest. I have had five specimens brought to me at various times, all taken on the edge of the Forest; and have frequently seen bats, which I believe to be this species, flying in the shady parts of the Forest at dusk, but it is by no means easy to obtain them, from the difficulty of finding them when shot. The other species which I have found here are the great bat (Vespertilio noctula), the common bat (V. pipistrellus), the whiskered bat (V. mystacinus), Natterer's bat (V. Nattereri), and the long-eared bat (Plecotus auritus). I saw V. Nattereri flying about the lanes at Sawtry, in Huntingdonshire, in June last.—H. Doubleday; Epping, December 6, 1841.

Notice of a Bat flying by daylight. One sunny day in August, four or five years since, I was on Wimbledon Common, when my attention was directed upwards by the screaming of swallows, and the cause of their disquiet then became apparent. A large bat was sailing about most majestically, attacked on all sides by the swallows, who seemed ill to relish the intrusion of this lover of twilight into day and their society. As the sun was shining brightly, I was surprised to see the bat on the wing; but I was much more interested by ob-