716 



SOME KONKAN BATS. 



By R. C. Wroughton, C.M.Z.S., 



Indian Forest Service. 



[with a plate.] 



{Read before the Bombay Natural History Society on \%th Sept., 1899.) 



This paper Joes not profess to be an exhaustive list of the bats of 

 even the limited area with which it deals. In the present state of 

 our knowledge of systematic zoology in India, there can be no doubt 

 that authentic lists of any group, iu any definite area, are of the great- 

 est value. The incompleteness of a list, though it undoubtedly reduces 

 its value, is very far from making it useless, so long as that incom- 

 pleteness is recognized. As I do not expect to have further oppor- 

 tunities of collecting in the area with which this paper deals, I offer 

 this record of the species I have been able to obtain in it, in the hope 

 ^hat members, who have the chance, will either add to it or help 

 towards its completion by sending in specimens. Properly " made " 

 skins, with their skulls, are the best form in which to send in specimens, 

 and any one willing to help in this way — whether in this or any other 

 definite area — can always obtain printed instructions for guidance on 

 application to the Honorary Secretary of this Society. There are 

 many, however, who have no taste or no leisure for such work, who 

 yet can help by putting any bats they may be able to obtain into spirits 

 and sending them to the Society. 



I wish to record here my grateful thanks to Mr. Oldfiold Thomas, of 

 the British Museum, for his kind help and encouragement, without 

 which I should never have plucked up courage to make this, my 

 maiden excursion into systematic zoology, and also my thanks to 

 Mr. F. 0. Pickard Cambridge, for the excellent plate which he has 

 drawn for this paper. 



In the hot weather of 1897 1 made a small collection of bats in the 

 Surat District north of tho River Tapti. These were sent by the 

 Society to the British Museum, where they were studied by Mr. Old- 

 fiold Thomas, who published the result of his examination in our Journal 

 (Vol. XI, pt. 2). I continued collecting during the remainder of 1897 

 and up to April 1898, iu the North Konkan and in South Guzerat, 

 i.e., in the Thana and Surat Districts, which embrace roughly the strip 

 of country lying between the Ghats and the Sea, from Bombay 



