18 OCTOBER 1930, Page 15

WESTERN BATS.

A query about bats (not Lewis Carroll's " Do Cats Eat Bats ? ") reached me from Weston-super-Mare just before is series of similar questions appeared in the daily press. The race seems to have flourished exorbitantly, but nowhere so remarkably as in the south-west of England. Is not Wells Cathedral at least as famous among biologists as architects for the reason that it has housrd six several species of bat ? The question is how to get rid of them when they prove a nuisance, as in a particular porch in Weston-super-Mare. I believe the remedy is fumigation ; and I see that one corre- spondent to the Times claims that incense is a sovereign preventive. Probably anything with sulphur in it would be as effective, though less pleasant. For myself I have been watching with no little curiosity a single bat which has de- veloped a preference for daylight. It is, I think, a pipistrelle, but of a rather unusual bluish tint. Could the colour have affected the eyesight ? The genus is liable to albinism and