256 Analytical Notices of Books. 
The Transactions of the Linnean Society of London. Volume XVE. 
Part the Second. 
In the present part of the Transactions of the Linnean Society, the 
contents are partly botanical and partly zoological; the former somewhat 
exceeding the latter in extent. The zoological papers are from the pens 
of the Rev. L. Jenyns, Mr. Yarrell and Mr. Jeffreys, and these we shall 
proceed to notice in the order of the subjects to which they are respectively 
devoted. 
** Some Observations on the Common Bat of Pennant: with an 
‘* attempt to prove its identity with the Pipistrelle of French authors: by 
« the Rey. L. Jenyns,”’ first claim our attention. The Common Bat of 
our country, as the authour remarks, has been uniformly referred by British 
writers to the Vesp. murinus of Linneus; but difficult as it would be to 
determine with any thing like certainty the precise species originally 
intended by this denomination, it is yet probable, from the reference 
made by Linnzus to Brisson, that the Bat so designated was larger than 
our Common English species. Such is the one known on the continent 
as the Vesp. murinus, which differs from our Common Bat not merely 
in absolute size, but also in colour and general appearance, in the shape 
of the auricle and its operculum, and in some of its relative dimensions. 
The difference in size is indeed most striking, the length of the body 
in the continental Vesp. murinus being three inches and a half, and the 
extent of wing fifteen inches; while in the Common English Bat 
the length is only one inch and seven lines, and the extent of wing rarely 
exceeds eight inches and a half. 
With the continental species the name of Vesp. murinus may well be 
suffered to rest, rather than with our own Common Bat. ‘The former has 
been repeatedly well described and accurately figured, but the latter, 
originally imperfectly described at a period when the necessity of minute 
investigation was less evident than at present, has since been confused 
and rendered almost unintelligible by the errors of copiers and compilers. 
But by what name should the latter be designated? Arguing from the 
improbability that a species so common here should be unknown on the 
continent, Mr. Jenyns concludes that it can scarcely have escaped the 
