o be in pain, but they would not own
it, and seemed to value themselves on having undergone the
operation; though why it is performed, or why the females lose a
part of the little finger, could not as yet be learnt.

The weather was very close and sultry, and the natives having
fired the country for several miles round, the wind, which blew
strong on the 12th, was heated to a very extraordinary degree,
particularly at Rose-Hill, where the country was on fire for
several miles to the northward and southward.

Great numbers of parroquets were picked up under the trees,
and the bats, which had been seen frequently flying about
Rose-Hill soon after the evening closed in, and were supposed to
go to the southward every night, and return to the northward
before the day broke, now appeared in immense numbers: thousands
of them were hanging on the branches of the trees, and many
dropped down, unable to bear the burning winds.

The head of this bat strongly resembles that of a fox, and the
wings of many of them extend three feet ten inches: Governor
Phillip saw one which measured upwards of four feet from the tip
of each wing. Some were taken alive, and would eat boiled rice,
or other food readily out of the hand, and in a few days were as
domestic as if they had been bred in the house: the governor had
one, a female, that would hang by one leg a whole day without
changing its position; and in that pendant situation, with its
breast neatly covered with one of its wings, it ate whatever was
offered it, lapping out of the hand like a cat. Their smell is
stronger than that of a fox; they are very fat, and are reckoned
by the natives excellent food. From the numbers which fell into
the brook at Rose-Hill, the water was tainted for several days,
and it was supposed that more than twenty thousand of them were
seen within the space of one mile.

The dry weather still continued, and many runs of water which
were considerable at this season the last year, were now dried
up; but the brook at Rose-Hill, though greatly reduced, was still
a run of water that would supply more inhabitants than that
settlement is likely to contain for many years; and in all the
ponds there was plenty of good water; nor had the dry weather
affected a spring that rises on the side of a hill, the water of
which is better than what the brook affords. At Sydney, the run
of water was now very small, but was sufficient for all culinary
purposes; and should it h