552 eepoet — 1878, 



years after the death of Linnseus. The specimen brought to Paris by this traveller 

 was the only one known until 1860. Since that date, however, its native land 

 has been more freely open than before to explorers, and many specimens have been 

 obtained, one having lived for several years in the Gardens of the London Zoo- 

 logical Society. 



The history of a name is often not a little curious. Linnaeus applied the term 

 Lemures, i.e. the departed spirits of men, to these animals on account of their 

 nocturnal habits and ghost-like aspect. The hypothetical continent in the Indian 

 Ocean, supposed to have connected Madagascar with the Malayan Archipelago is 

 called by Mr. Sclater, Lemuria, as the presumed original home of the Lemur-like 

 animals. Although the steps are not numerous, it might puzzle a classical scholar, 

 ignorant of Zoology, to explain the connection between this continent and the 

 Roman festival of the same name. 



The fifth animal which Linnaeus places in his genus Lemur, under the name of 

 L. volans, is the very singular creature to which the generic terra Galeopit.heeus has 

 since been applied. It is one of those completely aberrant forms, which having no 

 near existing relations, and none yet discovered among extinct forms, are perfect 



?uzzles to systematic zoologists. It is certainly not a lemur, and not a bat, as has 

 een supposed by some. We shrink from multiplying the orders for the sake of 

 single genera containing only two closely allied species ; so we have generally 

 allowed it to take refuge among the Insectivora, though without being able to show 

 to which of that .somewhat heterogeneous group it has any near affinities. 



The fourth genus of the Primates is VespertUio, comprising six species of bats. 

 This genus has now by universal consent expanded into an order, and one of the 

 best characterized and distinctly circumscribed of any in the class : indeed, those 

 who have worked most at the details of the structure of bats find so much diversity 

 in the characters of the skull, teeth, digestive organs, &c, associated with the modi- 

 fication of the forelimbs for flight common to all, as almost to entitle them to be 

 regarded rather as a sub-class. Anatomical, as well as palreontological evidence, 

 show that they must have diverged from the ordinary mammalian type at a very 

 far distant date, as the earliest known forms, from the Eocene strata, are quite 

 as specialized as any now existing, and no trace has hitherto been discovered of 

 forms linking them to any of the non-volant orders. By the publication withiu 

 the last few weeks of a valuable monograph on the existing species of the group, 

 entitled " A Catalogue of the Chiroptera in the Collection of the British Museum," 

 by G. E. Dobson, we are enabled to contrast our present knowledge with that of 

 the time of Linnreus. Although the author has suppressed a large number of 

 nominal species which formerly encumbered our catalogues, and wisely abstained 

 from the tendency of most monographists to multiply genera, he describes four 

 hundred species, arranged in eighty genera : nearly double the number of species, 

 and exactly double the number of genera, of the whole class Mammalia in the 

 Systemo Natures, and these Dr. Giinther remarks in his Preface are probably only 

 a portion of those existing. The small size, nocturnal habits, and difficulty of 

 capture of these animals, are sufficient reasons for the supposition that there are 

 still large numbers unknown to science. In the list of Linnaeus, the first primary 

 group of Dobson, the Megackiroptera, now containing seventy species, is represented 

 by a single one, V. Vampyrus, obviously a Iterojms, to which the blood-thirsty 

 habits of the fabulous Vainpyre are attributed, but which is not absolutely identi- 

 fied with any one of the known species. The other species described by Linnaeus 

 can almost all be identified with bats at present well known. 



A curious example of the results of basing classification upon a few, and those 

 somewhat artificial characters, is afforded by one of the true bats, now called 

 Noctilio Iepo)-inus, though admitted by Linnaeus to be ' simillimus vespertilionibvs, 

 similiter pedibus alatus, being separated from the others, not only generically, but 

 even placed in another order, that of the Glires or Rodents, because it did not, or 

 was supposed not, to fall under the definition of the order Primates, which begins 

 ' Denies primores inciso?-es superiores IV. paralteli.' In reality this bat has four 

 upper incisors, but the outer ones are so small as to have been overlooked when 

 first examined. But even, if this were not so, no one would now dream of basing 



