THE ANNALS 
AND 
MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
[FOURTH SERIES.] 
No. 3. MARCH 1868. 
——_ 
XXIITI.—On the New Bat (Amblyotus atratus) discovered by 
Prof. Kolenati. By L. H. Jerrre.es*. 
SOME astonishment was excited in the scientific world when 
the late Professor Kolenati, of Briinn, in 1858 published (in 
the Sitzungsber. der Wiener Akad., mathem.-naturw. Klasse, 
xxix. pp. 250-256) the description of a Bat discovered by him on 
the Bivater. and which he not only regarded as a new species 
in the South-European fauna, but actually set up as the type 
of anew genus. Could it really be possible, in the middle of 
the nineteenth century, to discover new species and even new 
genera of Mammalia in the heart of Europe? This seemed, 
even to many scientific men, so incredible that they felt them- 
selves obliged to oppose more or less doubt to the very exist- 
ence of this newly described animal, which, moreover, has 
remained undetected even to the present day in any other re- 
gion of Germany, and to assume that there had been some 
error in the determination. I must admit that I also was not’ 
disinclined to partake of these doubts; and I was the more in- 
duced to do so, as one of the greatest living European authori- 
ties on the Mammalia expressed an opinion, in a letter to me, 
that Kolenati’s new Bat might probably be only Vesperugo 
Nilssonii, Blas. During my Gaiden in Olmiitz I took pains 
to obtain Bats from the Altvater, in order to be able to form 
an opinion for myself, from my own investigations, as to this 
doubtful new mammal. By the kindness of M. Theisler, at 
that time tutor in the house of M. Primavesi, a merchant in 
Olmiitz, and who passed a great part of the summer of 1864 in 
Griifenberg, I obtained at last a Bat (found on the 11th of August, 
1864, in the daytime, under a stone near the Swiss dairy on 
the Altvater) from the careful examination of which I con- 
Dice rom the fourth Programm der N.-é. Landes-Oberrealschule zu St. 
dlten. 
Ann. & Mag. N--Hist:” Ser. 4. Vol. i. 12 
