THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 

 No. 3. MARCH 1868. 



XXIII. — On the New Bat (Amblyotiis atratus) discovered hy 

 Prof. Kolenati. By L. H. Jeitteles*. 



Some astonishment was excited in the scientific world when 

 the late Professor Kolenati, of Briinn, in 1858 published (in 

 the Sitzung'sber. der Wiener Akad., mathem.-naturw. Klasse, 

 xxix. pp. 250-256) the description of a Bat discovered by him on 

 the Altvater, and which he not only regarded as a new species 

 in the South-European fauna, but actually set up as the type 

 of a new 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, Bias. During my residence 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 

 Graf enberg, 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 Avhich I con- 



* From the fourth Programm der N.-o. Landes-Oben'ealschule zu St. 

 Pollen. 



Ann. S Mag. N. Hist. Ser.4. Vol. I 12 



