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Updated: August 27, 2024
It was shortly after midnight when a crow and a flying-fox saw Finn curl down to sleep in his sandy gully, and, by making use of the curious system of animal telepathy, of which even such ingenious humans as Mr. Marconi know nothing, they soon had the news spread all over the range.
A leaping fish splashed far out on the water. A tiny wavelet murmured sleepily on the beach. The shadow of a flying-fox drifted by in velvet silence overhead. A light air fanned coolly on her cheek; it was the land-breeze beginning to blow. "You go along quarters," she said, starting to turn on her heel to enter the gate. "You pay me," said the boy. "Aroa, you all the same one big fool.
We reached lat. 14 degrees 16 minutes 17 seconds, having travelled about nine miles north-west by north. A range composed of baked sandstone, approached so close to the banks of "Flying-Fox Creek," that we were obliged to cross the range; to the east-ward of which tea-tree flats extended, with many deep but dry water-holes, fringed with fine drooping tea-trees.
They tried to frighten us, by imitating a howling chorus of native dogs; but withdrew, when they saw it was of no avail; at all events, they left us undisturbed during the night except by one of their dogs, which had been attracted probably by the scent of our flying-fox supper.
Some large winged animal, presumably a fruit-bat or a flying-fox, entered by the window and circled the room like an airplane; and, judging from the sounds which proceeded from beneath the bed, I gathered that the room also harbored a snake or a large rat, though which I was not certain as I saw no reason for investigating.
This noise of animal life during the night formed an agreeable contrast to the dead silence which we had observed at almost all our camps around the gulf, with the exception of the one occupied on the 1st September, and of that at the Marlow, where the flying-fox was the merry reveller of night. Sept. 10.
As a rule, thick forest covers the islands; only rarely we find areas covered with reed-grass. On Erromanga these are more frequent. In the Santa Cruz Islands the flora seems richer than in the New Hebrides. Still more simple than the flora is the fauna. Of mammals there are only the pig, dog, a flying-fox and the rat, of which the first two have probably been imported by the natives.
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.
Neither the flying-fox, nor any other bat that I know of in Ceylon, ever hybernates. 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.
All moved cautiously up, and sure enough, hanging head down, was what my friend took to be a veritable flying fox; but he was in a hopeless minority. All scornfully out-voted him, and to this day the blacks assert that "a piccaninny debil-debil" so closely resembles a flying-fox that none but a black boy can tell the difference.
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