and Description ofNeic Genera and Species. 485 



the discovery of the various species which inhabit this country. Ray 

 and Merretj as I have before observed, only knew a single species, 

 and this was the only one recognized as British, until the year 1738, 

 Avhen Albin first figured (Birds, t. 101.), and 1766, George Edwards 

 again figured the long-eared bat in his work on Birds (t. 201. f. 

 3.) ; and Pennant recorded these two in his first edition of the Bri- 

 tish Zoology. In his succeeding editions he extended the number 

 to 4, adding the Noctide on the authority of the Rev. Dr Buck- 

 worth, who had observed a large bat, which Pennant thought to 

 be this species, (Brit. Zool. Illust. 177^-85,) at Queen's College, 

 Cambridge ; but the Rev. Gilbert White had written to him, 

 and given him a good history of this bat in 1769, (Hist. Selborn, 

 1779j 75, 76,) and secondly, the horse-shoe bat, Rhinolophus 

 ferrum equinum, which had been discovered by Mr (afterwards Dr) 

 Latham at Dartford. In 1806 (Ann. Mus. viii. 198,) M. Adolphe 

 Brongniart, when travelling from Dover to London, discovered a 

 new species which was described under the name of V. emargina- 

 tiis; and, in 1808, Montagu in the Linnaean Transactions (i. 71^ 

 added to those already known, the little horse-shoe (Rhinolophus 

 hipposideros), and the barbastelle {Vesp. Barbnstelliis ;) but it is 

 doubtful if the animal described by Montagu was the real barbas- 

 telle, for the remains of the specimen so named in his collection, was 

 certainly Vesp. myslacinus of Kuhl, but the fact of the Barbastelle 

 being British was fully established in 1805, by the figure of it 

 given by Mr Sowerby in his British JMiscellany, from a specimen 

 found by Mr Peate at Dartford. 



In 1825, Dr Leach described and figured in the Zoological Jour- 

 nal, (7^ t. 22.) what he considered as a new species, under the name 

 of Vespertilio pygmeus, sending the specimen described to the British 

 IMuseum. In 1826, feeling from the experience that I had gained 

 when studying with that great reformer of zoology in England Dr 

 Leach, that the British bats had not had the attention paid to them 

 that they deserved, I examined the various specimens collected by 

 Dr Leach, myself, and our correspondents, which were then in the 

 British Museum, and in the ZoologicalJournal (p. 108) for that year, 

 1 gave a list of the specimens then in the collection, and by that 

 means added the four following species, viz. Vespertilio Bechsteinii, 

 V. Naitereri, F. serotinus, and V. mystacvius. Dr Fleming having 

 overlooked my paper in 1828, when his work on British Animals 

 appeared, merely gave the species that were known before its pub- 

 lication; while the Rev. Leonard Jenyns and Mr Bell, in their works 

 on the British Mammalia, have been able to add two more species to 

 the list, viz. F. Leisleri and V. discolor, which 1 had added to the mu= 



