503 Bibliographical Notice. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE. 



Catalogue of the Ghiroptera in the Collection of the British Museum. 

 (Second Edition.) B}^ Knud Andersen. VoL I. Megachiropttra. 

 London; the Trustees of the British Museum. 1912. 



Dr. Knud Andersen" in this volume has set a new standard of 

 perfection in the preparation of catalogues of zoological specimens. 

 The British Museum long since showed the way in which this 

 most necessary but arduous work should be done, but Dr. Andersen 

 has introduced features which add immensely to the value of such 

 publications. 



Hitherto such catalogues have been purely systematic in their 

 scope. Dr. Andersen has introduced the leaven of evolution, and 

 substitutes phylogeny for taxonomy, or, rather, his taxonomy is 

 determined by the revelations of phylogeny, so far as these can be 

 traced. In selecting a basis for classification he has — and rightly — 

 discriminated between " fixed " and " plastic " characters, which 

 last, of course, include secondary sexual characters. 



He devotes a section to the discussion of the inter-relations of 

 genera, which will prove exceedingly valuable to future workers, 

 and another to geographical distribution. This last will appeal 

 "to many who are not directly interested in the bats from a taxo- 

 nomic point of view ; and the same is true of the exceedingly 

 valuable facts which he has brought together under the hearliug of 

 life-histories. Since these last are not appended to every species, 

 we take it that where they are omitted nothing is known on this 

 head. It should be the aim of every student of this group of bats 

 to fill up these gaps. 



Nominally, this is a second edition of Dobson's 'Catalogue of the 

 Chiroptera in the British Museum,' 1878 : in reality, it is an inde- 

 pendent work. Nothing remains, indeed, save the title. How 

 great an advance in our knowledge of these animals has been made 

 during the last thirty-five years may be gathered from the fact that 

 in Dobson's volume only 425 species were known, to-day the number 

 reaches 1470. 



The ilhistrations furnish another striking feature of this volume, 

 for they are both nnmerous and of quite exceptional excellence — a 

 result due in part to Dr. Andersen's fine discrimination and in part to 

 Mr. Terzis masterly draughtsmanship. 



In this bulky volume Dr. Andersen includes only the Macro- 

 chiroptera. We look forward to the issue of further volumes. 



