352 GEOGRAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



former with about fifty species, and the latter with about forty, 

 approach cosmopolitanism. Of the Emballonuriciae but a single 

 genus, Nyctinomus, is common to both hemispheres, and its early 

 differentiation is shown in the fact that, while all the American 

 forms are closely related to one another, they depart widely from 

 their European representatives. 



The Phyllostomida3, or simple leaf-nosed bats, which comprise 

 the vampyres, number upwards of fifty species, all of them very 

 closely related, and, with one exception Trachyops cirrhosus, which 

 has been noted from the Bermudas (and also doubtfully recorded 

 from South Carolina) confined to the Neotropical realm, over the 

 forest-covered tracts of which they range from Mexico to about the 

 thirtieth parallel of south latitude.* Vampyrus spectrum, the best 

 known species of vampyre whose habits appear to be mainly 

 frugivorous and the largest of all the American bats, is distributed 

 over the greater portion of the tract covered by the entire family. 



Of the strictly Old World families of bats the Pteropodidse, 

 fruit-eating bats or flying-foxes, are specifically the most numerous, 

 comprising about seventy species, distributed between the Aus- 

 tralian, Oriental, and Ethiopian realms, and some of the intervening 

 tracts, with a preponderance of species in the first-named region. 

 They are restricted almost wholly to the region of the tropics, 

 where a continuous supply of tree-fruits might be obtained; no 

 species has thus far been noted from either New Zealand or Tas- 

 mania. Cynonycteris, alone of the genera, has the distribution of 

 the entire family. The most largely represented genus is Pteropus, 

 which includes more than one-half of all the recognised species be- 

 longing to the family; its range extends from the Comoro Islands 

 on the west to the Navigators' Islands, in the Pacific, on the east, 

 and through much the greater portion of tne Oriental and Aus- 

 tralian regions ; but few of the island groups of the Pacific 

 Sandwich Islands, Low Archipelago, Gilbert's and Ellice's groups 

 are deficient in the members of this genus, to which the largest 

 known forms of bats belong. Pteropus edulis, which inhabits the 

 islands of the Malay Archipelago, measures five feet in expanse of 

 wing. Only one species, Pteropus medius, the common flying-fox, 



* Macrotus Californicus or "Waterhousii just enters the United States (Fort 

 Yuma, California), but at a point which more properly belongs to the Neo- 

 tropical than to the Ilolarctic tract. 



