90 General Notes. 



THE GENERIC NAME NYCTERIS. 



Tlie generic name Nycteris as used for a group of Old World bats is 

 currentlj^ assumed to date from Geotfroy and Cuvier, 1795.* In reality it 

 was not published in this sense until 1S03,t the name as it occurs in the 

 earlier work being strictly a nomen nudum. % But during this interval of 

 eight years Nycteris had been applied by Borkhausen§ and Bechstein|| to 

 a very difierent animal, the New York Bat of Pennant, now currently 

 known as Lasiurus borealis. It is therefore necessary to substitute 

 Nycteris Borkhausen 1797 ior Lasmrus Gray IS?)!, IT Petali a Gray 18'^S** 

 for Nycteris Geoflroy 180.1, ft and the new family name Petaliidie for 

 NycterkJx Dobson 1875. §§ 



— Gerrit S. Miller, Jr. 



* Geoffroy and Cuvier, Magasin Encyclop^dique, le anii6e, II, p. 186. 



t Geoffroy, Catal. Mamm. Mus. Nat. d'Hist. Xat., Paris, p. 61. 



t " Nyctore iXycleris) ." 



§ Der Zoologe (CompendioseBibliothekgemeinnutzigsten Kenntnisse fiiralle Staiide, 

 pt. XXI) Heft IV-VII, p. 66, 1797, type Vespertilio noveboracensis Erxleben. Deutsche 

 Fauna, I, p. ■%, 1797 (no type mentioned). 



II Bechstein used the same name in his translation of Pennant's Synopsis of Quadru- 

 peds, ISOO, and in his Gemeinniitzige Xaturgesehichte Deutschlands, 1801, though in 

 tlie latter no species is mentioned. 



1 Zoological Miscellany, No. 1, p. 38. 



** Mag. Zool. and Bot., II, p. 494. Type Nycteris javanicus Geoffroy. 



tt Unless one of the orthographic x&Tiants, Nicteris Desmarest 1803 (Nouv. Diet. 

 d'Hist. Nat., XV, p. 501) or Nycterus Fischer 1813 (Zoognosia, I, p. 18) be regarded as a 

 distinct name. 



§§ Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.. Uh ser., XVI, p. 348 (part). Miller, Families and Gen- 

 era of Bats, p. 99, 1907. 



