When at rest, or asleep, the disposition of the limbs is most curious.  At such times it suspends itself by one foot only, bringing the other close to its side, and thus it is enabled to wrap itself in the ample folds of its wings, which envelop it like a mantle, leaving only its upturned head uncovered.  Its fur is thus protected from damp and rain, and to some extent its body is sheltered from the sun.

As it collects its food by means of its mouth, either when on the wing, or when suspended within reach of it, the flying-fox is always more or less liable to have the spoil wrested from it by its intrusive companions, before it can make good its way to some secure retreat in which to devour it unmolested.  In such conflicts they bite viciously, tear each other with their hooks, and scream incessantly, till, taking to flight, the persecuted one reaches some place of safety, where he hangs by one foot, and grasping the fruit he has secured in the claws and opposable thumb of the other, he hastily reduces it to lumps, with which he stuffs his cheek pouches till they become distended like those of a monkey; then suspended in safety, he commences to chew and suck the pieces, rejecting the refuse with his tongue.

To drink, which it does by lapping, the Pteropus suspends itself head downwards from a branch above the water.

Insects, caterpillars, birds’ eggs, and young birds are devoured by them; and the Singhalese say that the flying-fox will even attack a tree snake.  It is killed by the natives for the sake of its flesh, which, I have been told by a gentleman who has eaten of it, resembles that of the hare.[1] It is strongly attracted to the coconut trees during the period when toddy is drawn for distillation, and exhibits, it is said, at such times, symptoms resembling intoxication.

[Footnote 1:  In Western India the native Portuguese eat the flying-fox, and pronounce it delicate, and far from disagreeable in flavour.]

Neither the flying-fox, nor any other bat that I know of in Ceylon, ever hybernates.

There are several varieties (one of them peculiar to the island) of the horse-shoe-headed Rhinolophus, with the strange leaf-like appendage erected on the extremity of the nose.

It has been suggested that the insectivorous bats, though nocturnal, are deficient in that keen vision characteristic of animals which take their prey by night.

[Illustration:  RINOLOPHUS.]

I doubt whether this conjecture be well founded; it certainly does not apply to the Pteropus and the other frugivorous species, in which the faculty of sight is singularly clear.  As regards the others, it is possible that in their peculiar oeconomy some additional power may be required to act in concert with that of vision, as in insects, touch is superadded, in its most sensitive development, to that of sight.  It is probable that the noseleaf, which forms an extended screen stretched behind the nostrils in some of the bats, may be intended by nature to facilitate the collection and conduction of odours, just as the vast expansion of the shell of the ear in the same family is designed to assist in the collection of sounds—­and thus to supplement their vision when in pursuit of prey in the dusk by the superior sensitiveness of the organs of hearing and smell.