ORDER CARNASSIER. 99 



From this period, the family of the bats was established 

 on solid foundations. A guide was procured, which was 

 appreciated and followed. Linnaeus gave the first example 

 of its good effects in withdrawing from his genus Vespertilio, 

 the hare-lipped bat, and making it, in the twelfth edition 

 of the Sy sterna Natures, the genus Noctilio of his glires. 



The employment of the incisive teeth had hitherto done 

 so well for the establishment of genera, that it was natural 

 to set some value on the character. Great then was the 

 astonishment of naturalists to learn, first from Brisson, 

 then from Daubenton, that the bats differed among them- 

 selves in this very important respect. 



The number of these animals, as yet known, was not 

 considerable, nor had sufficient attention been bestowed 

 on the affinities of the animal world. Naturalists continued, 

 after the example of Daubenton, to comprise all the bats, 

 with which they were acquainted, within a single genus ; 

 and, by way of apology for so doing, they affected to insist 

 on the discordance of their generic characters, alleging 

 that the anomalies of these animals were utterly inex- 

 plicable and irreconcilable with all the principles of syste- 

 matic arrangement. 



Erxleben alone renewed the division of Brisson, of 

 Pteropus and Vespertilio, and in his mode of doing it ex- 

 hibited but little judgment— for he destroyed the essential 

 character of the genus Vespertilio by defining it like Bris- 

 son, and yet placing in it the new species of bats discovered 

 by Daubenton, to which the definition of Brisson could by 

 no means apply. 



Subsequent naturalists did nothing but copy their prede- 

 cessors and each other. They adhered to the plan of a 

 single genus, and seem to have imagined that they fully 

 satisfied the increasing demands of science by an enumera- 

 tion of the incisive teeth of each species. 



The naturalist to whom we are most indebted for the 



H 2 



