i6o Geo. E. Mason : Fruit-eating Bats. [Vol. II, 



Church of the United Brethren, descriptive of the ethnology 

 and natural productions of the Nicobar Islands, observed 

 during a residence of eight years in the group (1779-1787), and 

 also from the widely scattered references to be met with in 

 the journals of later observers, we have long known that the rank 

 and luxuriant forests which clothe a greater part of the numerous 

 islands comprising this archipelago, have afforded subsistence to 

 at least one representative of the family of large frugivorous 

 bats belonging to the genus Pteropus. Fitzinger, however, in 1861 

 {Sitzungsb. Wien Akad.^ p. 389) was the first writer to recognise this 

 bat as a distinct species by name, specimens having reached Vienna, 

 together with other material collected in Car-Nicobar by the 

 naturalists attached to the iVustrian exploratory expedition of 

 the frigate " No vara " in 1858. Although Fitzinger assigned the 

 name of Pteropus nicoharicus to this bat, no details of the specific 

 characters which constituted the species were given until Zelebor ' 

 published his exhaustive, though scarcely diagnostic, description in 

 1869. 



It should, however, be remembered that prior to the publication 

 of Fitzinger and Zelebor's name and description, specimens of the 

 same Nicobarian bat had been deposited in the Museum of the 

 Asiatic Society of Bengal so long ago as 1846 by Captain H. Lewis, 

 the examples being contained in a collection made during a cruise 

 of the schooner " I^'Espiegle " in the previous year, amongst the 

 islands of the Nicobar Archipelago; and this collection, supple- 

 mented by additional material bequeathed to the Museum of the 

 Society by the Rev, J. Barbe, formed together the subject of a 

 paper by Blyth in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (vol. 

 XV, 1846, p. 367), descriptive of the vertebrated fauna of the Nico- 

 bar Islands; and we may here conveniently give the following 

 transcription taken from his original description of the bats con- 

 tained in the collection : — 



'' Pteropiis edulis, Pt. javanicus, Horsf,, etc., etc. — Three 

 specimens are alike remarkable for having the throat and front of 

 the neck black, the head blackish, the nape dull reddish-brown, 

 the back shining black, flanks and vent dull black, and the rest 

 of the under-parts dull reddish-brown, much paler in the centre." 



The detailed form of this notice would lead us to infer that 

 Blyth was constrained to include these specimens under this title, 

 although the differentiation of the examples in form and colour 

 must have strongly impressed him at the time he compiled his 

 article. When seventeen years later he published the Catalogue of 

 Mammalia in the Museum of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1863), 

 these original specimens of Captain Lewis's received specific dis- 

 tinction under the name of Pteropus melanotus. Immediately 

 following the publication of the Catalogue, Dr. Frederick J. Mouat's 

 book of Adventures and Researches among the Andaman Islands was 

 issued, with a zoological appendix contributed by Blyth; and in an 



Reisc der Oester. Freg. Novara, Saugethiere, p. ii. 



