On ncic Earopertyi Inscetivora and Carmvora. 389 



certain distance southward into the area in which minimus is 

 the dominant form. But all this is precisely wliat we must 

 expect, in view of the fact that these races do not occupy 

 isolated (insular) localities, but the central and southern part 

 of one continuous land area. — Very likely there is also in 

 W. Asia a certain region in which both forms or intermediate 

 examples occur (see the female from S. Caucasus, which I 

 have referred to hipposiderus, but which has the minimum 

 size of this race). 



From France and the whole of the Balkan Peninsula S. of 

 Rustshuk we completely lack information ; it would be parti- 

 cularly interesting to know whetlier French specimens are 

 hipposiderus or 7ninimus^ or, possibly, identical with the 

 British form, minutus. 



I should not have taken the trouble to give the proofs — 

 once more, and in a much more detailed form — of the exist- 

 ence in continental Europe of two well-marked races of 

 the Lesser Horseshoe Bat were it not for tlie following- 

 reason : — It is a matter of course that on the basis of the 

 collection in one single Museum — be such collection even so 

 rich as that of the British Museum — it is impossible to give 

 more than a rough sketch of the range of these two races of 

 Uh. hipposiderus ; the working out of the details must be 

 left to the local naturalists interested in the subject. But 

 the stimulus to do such useful work is naturally taken away, 

 or greatly weakened, when a writer, claiming- to base his 

 conclusion on a careful examination of an unusually large 

 series of specimens, declares that he cannot see that the 

 supposed racial difference is anything but a difference 

 between male and female of the same species. To show that 

 this opinion is entirely wrong is the object of these lines. 

 Naturalists may safely take it as an established fact that 

 these two races do exist ; what we want to know now is, 

 (1) the exact area occupied exclusively by the one or the other 

 form, and (2) the area where both of them occur together. 

 This latter is the transitional zone between the regions 

 inhabited by the two races. 



L. — Some new European Insectivora and Carnivora. 

 By Geerit is. Miller. 



In the course of some studies of the European mammal 

 fauna, undertaken at the invitation of Mr. Oldtield Thomas, 

 I have found the following hitherto unnamed Insectivora and 

 Carnivora. 



