1905. | OF THE GENUS RHINOLOPHUS 97 
the only Rhinolophus in the museum from any of those islands. 
This is, of course, not beyond the limits of possibility ; but it is 
certainly much more likely that RA. petersi, as also the vast 
majority of the Bats in the Caleutta Museum at Dobson’s time, 
came from some part of the Indian Peninsula or the Himalayas, 
the habitat of Rh. rowxi, and far from the home of Rh. acuminatus 
and its allies. 
To describe a new species which subsequently proves to be an 
old one is no rare occurrence, and, as a rule, it does no very serious 
harm. But the strong emphasising of a purely individual 
peculiarity, combined with the circumstance that the type had no 
“ locality,” caused in this case a series of confusions: Rh. petersi 
emerged, like a ghost, very unexpectedly at such different places 
as the Gold Coast, Sumatra, the Himalayas, and 8. India. And, 
curiously enough, the author of the “species” inaugurated the 
mistakes. When he had returned to London and was working 
out his ‘Catalogue,’ Dobson had no longer access to the type of 
Rh. peterst; he had his own short description only, and perhaps some 
private note. It is quite evident that, in these circumstances and 
occupied with the study of many other Bats, he lost the precise 
idea of the type specimen ; he only kept in his memory, as its most 
important character, its ‘‘ projecting” connecting process. So it 
eame that he referred a specimen labelled ‘Gold Coast” to 
Rh. petersi*; for it is a genuine acuminatus, beyond all doubt 
from Java, and Dobson himself would scarcely have been able 
to tell why he called it peterst instead of acuminatus. Two 
years later, Dobson had for determination a collection of Bats 
belonging to the Gottingen Museum; among these he again 
believed he found a Fh. petersit. I have had this example for 
inspection £; it is neither ‘“‘ Rh. petersi” nor Rh. acuminatus, but 
Rh. sumatranus. 
(6) In a paper on some Himalayan Bats, Capt. Hutton § records 
Rh. petersi from Masuri. All the Bats mentioned by Hutton 
were presented to the ‘‘ Indian Museum,” and are now in the 
British Museum. The two specimens labelled “ Rh. petersi” are 
Rh. monticola, a species closely allied to Rh. lepidus ||. 
* Dobson, Cat. Chir. Brit. Mus. (1878) p. 114. 
+ Dobson, “On some new or rare Species of Chiroptera in the Collection of the 
Gottingen Museum,” P. Z.S. 1880, p. 462. 
¢ I am indebted to Geheimrat, Professor Dr. Ehlers, Gottingen, for the loan of 
this specimen. 
§ Hutton, “On the Bats of the North-western Himalayas; with Notes and Correc- 
tions in Nomenclature by Prof. W. Peters,” P. Z.S. 1872, p. 700. 
|| As Hutton’s article is one of the very few papers which give information respecting 
the habits of Himalayan Bats, and therefore has been frequently quoted by subsequent 
writers, I think it advisable to correct the following errors in the identifications of 
the four species of Rhinolophus dealt with in that paper :—“‘ Rh. affinis’’ (p. 696) 
is Rh. pearsoni; “ Rh. rouwi” (p. 697) is Rh. affinis ; “ Rh. minor” (p. 698) is Rh. 
rouxi; and, as pointed out above, “ Rim petersi” (p. 700) is Rh. monticola. Hutton’s 
Bats were (as also stated in his paper) determined, not by himself, but by Prof. 
Peters in Berlin. But the mistakes are so strange that they cannot, certainly, be 
due to Prof. Peters; an extensive confusion of labels must have occurred (I can 
rather easily, from Peters’s point of view, as laid down in his papers, guess the 
original arrangement of the labels), but the confusion had at all events taken place 
before the specimens were returned to Hutton. 
Proc. Zoou. Soc.—1905, Vou. II. No. VII. 7 
