Prof. MacGillivray on Vespertilio Daubentoniu 255 



Lapland, Finland, Estonia, the government of Olonetz, as well as those 

 parts of the government of Archangel situate to the south and east of the 

 White Sea, were still covered by the waters of the sea, above which the 

 only part that was elevated, like an island, was the highest portion of 

 Russian Lapland. At this period the floating ice of the Scandinavian 

 chain and of Lapland may have come, without being exposed to any se- 

 vere concussion, into the plains of northern Germany and central Rus- 

 sia, leaving erratic blocks as traces of their voyages, as happens every 

 spring with the ice of the largest lakes of Finland. 



With regard to the southern limit at which the erratic blocks of the 

 north have been dispersed in the interior of Russia, science will receive 

 important information from a series of recent expeditions undertaken by 

 M. le Baron dc MeycndorfF; at least I infer thus much from the obliging 

 communications with which he has favoured mc.* 



Descnption ofVespertilio Daubentonii,ffom Specimens foundin 

 Aberdeenshire. By WilliamMacGillivray, A.M., M.W.S., 

 &c., Professor of Natural Plistory in the Marisclial College 

 University of Aberdeen. Communicated by the Author. 



Among the first fruits of my labours in the hitherto little- 

 explored district in which it has pleased Providence to assign 

 me a location, has been the discovery of a species of Bat, which 

 one could scarcely have expected to find so far north in Scot- 

 land. Even in the southern districts of that country I have 

 never met with any other species of Cheiroptera than Vesper- 

 tilio Pipistrellus and Plecotus auritus, both of which also occur 

 in Aberdeenshire. Such, then, being the paucity of species 

 belonging to this family among us, any addition to the number 

 known must prove interesting to zoologists in all parts of the 

 kingdom; and as VSspertilio Daubentonii has not been often 

 or very accurately described from native specimens, I have 

 pleasure in supplying a minute description, taken from an 

 adult male, a female, and a young individual, obtained in the 

 churchyard and in one of the steeples of the Cathedral of Old 

 Machar, a venerable granitic edifice in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of my place of residence. 



* Vide on this subject the remarks of Mr Murchison, at pages 135, 136^ 

 137, and 138 of this volume of Phil. Journal.— Edit. 



