1S98] SOME NEW BOOKS 129 



Perhaps one of the most successful pictures, and one which, hy the 

 courtesy of the publisliers, we are enabled to reproduce here, is that 

 of a kingfisher, whose portrait was obtained after six days of careful 

 watching (Plate VIII.). Tlie portrait of a water-vole also should be 

 mentioned as a most successful and beautiful picture. 



In a work of this kind it is extremely dillicult even to point out 

 the best things. It is a book to be bought and looked at again and 

 again with fresh pleasure. To the field naturalists and the lover of 

 animal life it will appeal most strongly, while to the cabinet naturalist 

 and the museum man it will undoubtedly be a revelation. 



NoKTH American Bats 



A Revision of the North American Bats of the Family Vespertilionidae. By 

 GerritS. Miller, jim. Svo, pp. 1-135, pis. I. to III. North American Fauna, No. 13. 

 Published by the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, 1897. 



Since the publication of Dobson's Catalogue of Chiroptera about 

 twenty years ago, no work on bats has appeared of such importance 

 to the specialist as the present paper, and this in spite of its dealing 

 only with the members of a single family from a single region, while 

 Dobson's grasp was world-wide. For it marks with the utmost clearness 

 the wide difference between the methods and materials of that day and 

 those which the most advanced and most happily situated of modern 

 workers have at their disposal to-day. Dobson in 1878 had, apart 

 from those he saw in other museums, seventy-nine specimens of 

 North American Vespertilionidae to work with ; Miller no less than 

 two thousand seven hundred ; while in the quality of the material 

 there was, if possible, an even greater difference than in the quantity, 

 owing to the perfection of the modern methods of collecting employed 

 in the United States. 



As to ^\\Q difficulty of the family worked out in the present paper, 

 we may quote Dr Harrison Allen's "Bats of North America" (1893) 

 as follows : — " The difficulties acknowledged in identifying the 

 American species are apparently insuperable," and although no one 

 would accuse Dr Allen, excellent anatomist as he was, of having any 

 special aptitude for species work (as witness Dobson, p. 329 ; and 

 Miller, pp. 59, 67, 72, 84), yet no one who has tried to name 

 American Vespertilionidae with Dobson's catalogue will deny that 

 the difficulties really are insuperable with any material which is as 

 yet on this side of the Atlantic. Thanks to Mr Miller's painstaking 

 and accurate work, these difficulties have now largely disappeared. 



Mr Miller recognises twenty-five species of North American 

 Vespertilionidae, belonging to eleven genera. Twenty-one other 

 forms are considered worthy of subspecific appellations, and a con- 

 siderable increase in this number is promised when further collec- 

 tions of skins render apparent such geographical variations in colour 

 as no doubt occur, but are as yet not definable owing to the great 

 mass of the material being preserved in spirit. Neither Natalus nor 

 Thyro'ptera are included in the family, for reasons which are not 

 stated. The author has tackled dc novo all the problems of nomen- 

 clature that have presented themselves, and he has therefore pro- 

 duced a work which in this respect shows a great advance on Dobson's 

 loose way of dealing with such questions. In fact it is really thanks 



