210 BULLETIN OF THE 



Lave been made of more importance than they deserve. Species have thus 

 sprung up, many of which have never been identified, and seem only to 

 retard progress by a useless synonomy." We fear, however, that Dr. 

 Allen, with all his care, and the almost unexceptionable character of his 

 admirable Monograph, has fallen in this group into an error which he 

 found it necessary to criticise in others. With original specimens of most 

 of his species for examination, I am unable to convince myself, either from 

 these or from his descriptions, that several of the species recognized or 

 described as new by him — especially V. lucifugus and V. ecotis, and also 

 V. ajjinis — are not really referable to V. subulalus. Among the large lot 

 of bats furnished by the Museum of Comparative Zoology for use in the 

 preparation of his Monograph, including some two hundred specimens from 

 different parts of North America (besides many from foreign countries), 

 specimens of Vespertilio from various localities in Maine and Massachusetts 

 were labelled by him, when returned, respectively V. < votis, J*, subulatus, and 

 V. lucifugus. Individuals of the same colony, and that I scarcely doubt in 

 some cases belonged to the same litter, of what I call V. subulalus, vary 

 considerably in color, and not a little in the form of the ear. Dr. Allen 

 sajs : '• The specimens of V. subulatus arrange themselves into two groups, 

 one of which may be considered typical, the other tending in the shape of 

 the ear to the preceding species [ V. evotis]. Indeed, the changes from 

 one species to the other is so gradual that it is difficult to assign a 

 boundary to each. I have included under V. subulalus a number of speci- 

 mens which have the ear higher than those from which the description has 

 been taken, but agreeing with V. subulalus in other particulars."* 



From a critical analysis and comparison of the tables of measurements 

 given by him of the different species of this genus, they appear most 

 decidedly to intergrade, no less in the size and form of the ear — the char- 

 acter on which their separation is mainly based — than in other points. 

 The V. lucifugus has, perhaps, the best claims to be regarded as a species, 

 but these seem to be highly equivocal. V. evotis is the form with the 

 highest, and relatively the largest ear, grading in this particular into V. 

 subulalus, the more common form, and this again into V. affinis (of which 

 but one specimen had been received) and V. lucifugus, in which the ear 

 exhibits the minimum of size. In the latter the snout is blunter, and in 

 the first more produced, this character correlating with the narrowed 

 and elongated or shortened and blunted ear. In other words, the V. evo- 

 tis is the slender form, the V. lucifugus the robust form, V. subulatus 

 coming in between the two.f They all appear to have the same geograph- 



* Monograph, p. 51. 



t Naturalists seem to overlook the fact that feral animals may vary in size, in general 

 ferm, in physiognomy, in temperament and disposition, in the same way as different 



