1861.] MR. R. F. TOMES ON THE GENUS VAMPYRUS. 103 



size and remarkable appearance, very soon attracted my attention. 

 Although I failed completely in finding any published description 

 which would apply to it, yet I could not but think it extraordinary 

 that such a fine species should have so long escaped observation ; 

 and this idea was heightened by the fact that several specimens had 

 come to hand which had not been received from private collectors, 

 but, on the contrary, from dealers. 



Being at length fully aware that no sufficient description could 

 have appeared, I drew up a full account of the species, and placed 

 specimens in the hands of Mr. Ford, for the purpose of adding figures 

 of the animal and of the teeth. A figure had scarcely been com- 

 pleted, when a very elaborate description appeared from the pen of 

 Dr. Peters, accompanied by a beautifully executed plate, of a species 

 of Vampyrus, having the appropriate name of Vamjyyrus auritiis, 

 which, at first sight, was evidently the species I had so often ob- 

 served. 



During the investigations gone into when working out the affinities 

 of this species, several others, more or less closely allied, were exa- 

 mined, and some careful notes were made ; and these, it appears to 

 me, will not be out of place now. I will first give an outline of what 

 may be termed the history of the nomenclature of these species, more 

 or less closely allied to Vampyrus. 



The name of Vampyrus is mentioned by M. Geoffroy St.-Hilaire 

 so long ago as 1810, in his paper on the Fhyllostomidee in the 'Annals 

 of the Museum,' but is only there alluded to as having been applied 

 by Linnaeus to the large frugivorous Bats in a vague manner, and as 

 having been made use of by Buifon when speaking of the Bat M. 

 Geoffroy was then describing, viz. Phyllostoma spectrum. But the 

 name appears to have been merely intended at this time to designate 

 such species as were supposed to be guilty of sanguivorous propensi- 

 ties ; and in Dr. Leach's paper in the Linnean ' Transactions,' we have 

 its first real application in a proper generic sense. In this paper, 

 which bears date 1820, we find Fa?«/)?/rM« applied to the Phyllostoma 

 spectrum of M. Geoffroy 's paper. 



In 1823 the large work of Dr. Spix, on the Brazilian Monkeys 

 and Bats, appeared, in which the distinction between the genera Phyl- 

 lostoma and Vampyrus was recognized, and three species placed in the 

 latter genus, all of which were distinct from the V. spectrum. More 

 than twenty years later (in 1847), M. D'Orbigny, in the part of his 

 work, ' Voyage dans I'Amerique meridionale,' devoted to Mammalia, 

 described and figured a Leaf-nosed Bat under the generic name of 

 Lophostoma ; and in the same year Dr. Gray published, in the ' Pro- 

 ceedings ' of the Zoological Society, the definitions of two new genera 

 of Phyllostomidee, which received respectively the names of Mimon 

 and Traehops, furnished by species called by Dr. Gray Phyllostoma 

 bennettii and Traehops fuliginosus. 



Finally, M. Gervais, so recently as 1855, in his account of the 

 Chiroptera collected in South America by M. de Castelnau, charac- 

 terizes, as the representati\ es of three new genera, three species which 

 had been previously described, — the first and second being the Vam- 



