340 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



name as well, calling it Plecotus rafinesquii. The description of the 

 color ("dark gray above, pale gray beneath") though inexact, is 

 certainly applicable to the present form and not at all to macrotis. 

 The statement that the ears are "duplicated" is descriptive of the 

 manner in which the inner rim folds upon the rest of the conch, and 

 will apply to no other of the eastern genera with which he could have 

 met, except possibly the very different Nyctinomus; in which the 

 " auricle " [i. e. tragus] is not " nearly as long." Even in Corynorhinus 

 the tragus is hardly more than half the length of the ear. The meas- 

 urements given, — "length 4 inches [= 101.5 mm.], breadth 12 inches 

 [= 304.5 mm.]" are not far from those of the Virginia specimens 

 (lengths 107, 108, 110; extent 320, 313, 313) allowing for differences 

 in manner of taking these dimensions. The tail is nearer one half 

 than three eighths of the total length. In spite of slight discrepancies, 

 I think the description can apply to no other bat of the eastern United 

 States. The very name is diagnostic. When LeConte proposed the 

 name Plecotus macrotis for the Big-eared Bat of the coast States, he 

 acknowledges its similarity to the species of the interior, by his 

 remark in a footnote: "There is another species with equally long 

 ears, which are not united on the cranium; which of these is the 

 megalotis of Raffin., it is impossible to say." In view of these facts, 

 I think the propriety of using Rafinesque's name is no longer open to 

 question. 



West of the Mississippi, typical megalotis (of which in lack of topo- 

 types I have assumed the Virginia specimens to be representative) 

 grades by insensible degrees into the more buff-colored subspecies 

 jjallescens, and the latter again shades rather abruptly into the dark- 

 colored townsendii of the humid Pacific coast area. Two specimens 

 from Sun City, south central Kansas, in the Biological Survey Collec- 

 tion, though not as dark as the Virginia megalotis are better referable 

 to it than to pallescens. Specimens from eastern and central Colorado 

 are intermediate, but on the whole, nearer pallescens. To the south- 

 ward as well as to the north, the limits of the range remain to be more 

 carefully worked out. 



Many years since. Dr. Harrison Allen (1864, p. 64) recorded on the 

 authority of Professor Baird, " that specimens of a Synotus, probably 

 of this species [i. e., viacrofis], were received some years ago by the 

 Smithsonian Institution, from Meadville," Crawford County, north- 

 western Pennsylvania. The specimens have been lost and no sub- 

 sequent captures of this bat have been made in the State. The record, 

 though discredited by Rhoads (1903, p. 226) may nevertheless be 



