266 G. E. Dobson— On Malayan Bats. [No. 3, 



Above, uni-coloured, dark brown throughout ; beneath, a lighter 

 shade of same colour. The fur of the back extends upon the base 

 of the interfemoral membrane as far as the end of the third 

 caudal vertebra, densely at the root of the tail but quickly thinning 

 out into a few scattered hairs at its termination ; the femurs are 

 thickly covered with hair for three-fourths their length, and a 

 few short hairs appear on the backs of the toes ; the head of the 

 humerus only is covered, and laterally the extent of fur upon the 

 wing-membrane is limited to a narrow portion along the sides of 

 the body. Beneath, the distal two-thirds of the humerus is naked 

 as above, but the wing membrane is covered as far as a line 

 drawn from the middle of the humerus to the knee-joint, a narrow 

 line of very fine short fur also extends from the elbow along the 

 posterior margin of the forearm to the carpus ; the femurs are dense- 

 ly covered with hair for their entire length, and the fur of the 

 abdomen extends upon the interfemoral membrane for nearly the 

 same distance as on the upper surface. 



Of the four columns of measurements given below, Nos. 1, 2, and 

 3 are of three adult male specimens from the Nicobars, the 

 fourth, — No. 1 a, is taken from the table of dimensions given by 

 Mr. Tomes in the Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 1858, vol. II, p. 160, 

 corresponding to No. 1 in that table, the lines being reduced to 

 tenths of an inch. 



The only differences of any account in the measurements are 

 in those of the head and feet ; the first is most probably due to 

 the difficulty in obtaining a correct measurement of the skull 

 when a skeleton of the specimen cannot be made, so that scarcely 

 any two persons will give the same dimensions ; the latter may be 

 be explained by supposing that Mr. Tomes, in measuring the feet 

 took into account the curvature of the claws. 



The similarity in measurement is very remarkable when we 

 consider the great distance of the two localities — Australia and the 

 Nicobar Islands — from each other, as we rarely find specimens of 

 the same species from different parts of the same country agreeing 

 so closely. 



