558 DR.W. PETERS ON INDIAN MICE. [DeC. 13 



informants in each of the above cases were men thoroughly able to 

 distinguish them from a Cassowary. 



" Our relations with the Wild Blacks are of so unsatisfactory a 

 nature that we can get no assistance from ihem." 



Mr. Gould exhibited, on the part of Sir William Jardine, a speci- 

 men of a new species of Honey-eater, of the genus Ptilotis, from 

 Victoria, Australia, proposed to be called Ptilotis cassidix, together 

 with some other rare Australian species, amongst which was a skin 

 of the rare Finch, Emblema pictum, from Northern Australia. 



Mr. St. George Mivart read the first of a series of memoirs en- 

 titled " Contributions towards a more Complete Knowledge of the 

 Skeleton of the Primates," of which the present related to the 

 "appendicular Skeleton of the Orang (Simia)." 



This paper will be published in the Society's ' Transactions.' 



The following papers were read : — 



1. Note on a Bat from the Azores. 

 By Dr. W. Beters, F.M.Z.S. 



Mr. Osbert Salvin has had the kindness to send me four specimens 

 of a Bat, collected by Mr. F. Godman, F.Z.S., in Fayal. They are 

 in a very bad state, and they seemed at first sight to belong' to a 

 new species of the genus Vesperugo, Keys, et Bias.* But on closer 

 examination they turned out to belong to Vesperugo leisleri, Kuhl, 

 a species very widely distributed through the Palsearctic region. 

 This species has not the feet entirely free, as described by Blasius, 

 but the wings are extended either to the beginning or to the middle 

 of the metatarsus. 



I do not know that any Bats have been described from the Azores ; 

 and therefore this notice may perhaps not be without some interest. 



2. Note on a Collection of Mice, made by Captain A. C. Beavan 

 at Maubhoum in 1865. By Dr. W. Peters, F.M.Z.S. 



Capt. Beavan's collection of Mice contains three species, all be- 

 longing to the genus Mus, as now restricted. 



Two of them are indeterminable, each being represented by a single 

 specimen in a very bad state — one being immature and without front 



* Vesperugo and Vesperus are generally by English writers called Scotophilus. 

 But this is wrong; for 1 have lately very carefully examined the original specimen 

 in the British Museum, on which Leach founded his genus Scotophilus. I find 

 that it is without any doubt a very young specimen of Nycticejus temminckii 

 from India. The name Scotophilus, therefore, is to he reserved for the Old 'World 

 Nycliceji, while Nycticejus may be restricted to the American species, which 

 are in several respects different, and for which Rafinesque originally proposed 

 I his name. 



