50 Transactions. — Zoology. 



(Peale, Expl. Exped.). This form is known to have a wide 

 range, there being specimens in the British Museum from the 

 Fiji Islands, from Norfolk Island, and from New Caledonia. 



Mr. Oldfield Thomas told me that he had fully satisfied 

 himself, by a comparison of the skull and other bones, of the 

 identity of Professor Hutton's Mus maorium (described from 

 fossil remains) with the rat now before you. 



Art. VII. — Note on the Bats of New Zealand. 

 By Sir Walter L. Buller, K.C.M.G., F.E.S. 



[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 26th October, 1892.] 



As there has hitherto been some confusion in the nomencla- 

 ture of the two species of bat inhabiting New Zealand, I think 

 it would be well to place on record in our Transactions the 

 following remarks on the subject by Mr. Oldfield Thomas, of 

 the British Museum, as contributed to the " Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History " for December, 1S89 : — 



" It has always been a subject of regret that, owing to 

 Gray's error in ascribing* to Forster's Vespertilio tubercu- 

 latus a specimen of the long-eared bat of New Zealand, 

 which he then described and made the type of the genus 

 Mystacina, the specific names of the two New Zealand bats 

 should have been identical, an identity particularly incon- 

 venient to writers on the fauna of that country. It is there- 

 fore with some pleasure that I am now able to point out that 

 the names of the two species should, after all, not both be 

 tuber culatus. 



" The Mystacina unquestionably should bear that name; 

 but in the case of the other species, referred in modern times 

 to the genus Ghalinolobus , the name tuberculatum has not the 

 priority of publication, although dating in manuscript from 

 the last century. It is now universally recognised that 

 manuscript names do not confer priority, and before Forster's 

 description of 1772-74 was published by Lichtenstein in 1844 1 

 a second name had been given to the bat by Dr. Gray, who 

 described a specimen from South Australia as Scotophilus 

 morio,\ and under the latter short and convenient specific 

 name the Ghalinolobus should certainly stand. 



" Instead, therefore, of Chalinolobus tuberculatum and Mys- 



* Voy. " Sulphur," Mamm., p. 23 (1843). 



t Forst. Descr. Anim., ed. Lieut., p. 62 (1844). 



\ Gray's Austr., App. ii., p. 405 (1811). 



