A REVIEW OF THE BATS OF THE GENUS HEMIDERMA. 



By Walter L. Hahn, 



Fellow in Indiana Univerntu, Bloomington, Indiana. 



Apparently the first published account of bats which can be defi- 

 nitely referred to this genus is that given by Albert Seba in his 

 Locupletissimus rerum naturaliura Thesaurus published in Amsterdam 

 in 1734. His description, under the name of YeHpertilio americanus 

 vulgaris^ might be applicable to any one of a number of species of 

 leaf -nose bats, and, indeed, was supposed for more than a century to 

 refer to a species of another genus; but fortunately his original speci- 

 mens are still preserved in the British Museum" and their accurate 

 identification is possil>le. 



Seba's name is not binomial and has no standing at present in 

 zoological nomenclature, l)ut his description and figure were the basis 

 for the Linnean species, Vespertilio perspicillatus^ and hence the 

 rediscovery of the original specimens is of very great importance. 



DISTRIBUTION. 



Bats of the genus Hemiderma are found in practically all parts of 

 tropical and subtropical America, including the West Indies. They 

 seem to be rare in these islands, as the extensive collections of West 

 Indian bats in the United States National Museum contain no repre- 

 sentatives of the genus. Three specimens from the island of Redonda 

 are in the collections of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadel- 

 phia, and the onl}^ additional records of which I have any knowledge are 

 those given by Dobson for Grenada and Jamaica. The most southern 

 locality of which I have any record is Sapucay in central Paraguay, 

 and the most northern is the State of Colima on the west coast of 

 Mexico. Throughout most of this immense area some form of the 

 genus appears to be one of the most common bats, and there are few 

 local lists that do not record it. 



« Thomas, Proc. Zool. Soc, Lond., 1892, p. 309. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. XXXII— No. 1514. 



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