OF S EL BORNE. 157 



Scarabcei solstitiales 1 , or fern-chafers. The powers of its 

 wing were wonderful, exceeding, if possible, the various 



susceptible of delicate impressions, and acted upon by them to the 

 performance of its special functions with equal acuteness and rapidity. 

 The tragus, which exists in man only as a small lobe projecting in front 

 over the auditory opening, becomes in many of the bats a lengthened 

 process, variously shaped, and evidently of considerable importance in 

 the physiology of the organ with which it is connected. It is the tragus 

 to which Gilbert White refers in the text as offering within the ear 

 somewhat of a peculiar structure : and as its form, as welLthe form of the 

 other cutaneous appendages of the bats, is of considerable importance in 

 the distinguishing of these animals from each other ; and as, moreover, 

 the distinction of the several kinds of bats is highly desirable, in order 

 to guide us to a more definite knowledge of these imperfectly understood 

 animals, and especially of the habits peculiar to each, it may be well to 

 refer to them as indicating, in most instances, specific characters for the 

 British bats. 



It is worthy of remark, however, before commencing this enumeration, 

 that at the time when White first wrote to Pennant on this subject, he 

 knew but two indigenous kinds: the long-eared and that which he 

 regarded as the short-eared : these, in fact, being all that were even 

 known to Linnaeus as European. White subsequently became acquainted 

 with another ; the great bat of the text. Pennant knew and described a 

 fourth, the horse- shoe bat. Many years subsequently elapsed without 

 the addition of another. The four indigenous species known in 1771 

 have now been increased to at the least fourteen distinct kinds ; so great 

 have been the advances that have of late years been made in England in 

 the search after animals and in the discrimination between them. 



The presence or absence of a nose-leaf is generally regarded as of 

 primary importance in the subdivision of the insectivorous bats. Of 

 those that possess such an appendage we have in England only two 

 kinds. These are the horse-shoe bats, forming part of the genus Rhino- 

 lophus, and readily distinguishable by their size into the greater (the 

 head and body of which are two and a half inches long,) and the less 

 (which does not measure in total length one inch and a half). Neither 

 of these is very generally distributed throughout the country, although 

 in some situations they are not uncommon : they chiefly frequent old 

 houses and caves. 



The remaining British bats are destitute of the nose-leaf, and may be 

 distinguished into genera by characters derived from the expansion of the 

 outer ear. In some of them the two ears meet in the middle of the fore- 

 head, and are united at their inner margins. Such is the case with the 

 barbastelle, constituting the genus Barhastellus of Mr. Gray, in which the 

 ears are shorter than the head; and the ears are also united on their 

 inner edge in the long-eared bats, Plecotvs, GEOFF, in which the external 

 ear is so largely and disproportionately developed as almost to equal in 



[AmjthimnUd solstttialis, LATR.] 



