INTRODUCTION. 



The total number of species described in the following pages is 400. 

 The descriptions, with very few exceptions, are original, and have 

 been taken directly from the types or from specimens which had 

 been compared with the types. During the past four years the 

 chief zoological museums on the continent of Europe were visited 

 from time to time by me, and the types of the species described by 

 Geofiroy, Temminck, Gervais, Peters, and Alph. Milne-Edwards 

 examined and compared; while previously I had the rare advantage 

 of seeing recent specimens of many species, and of studying their 

 habits, when travelling in South America and during a residence of 

 nearly four years in the East Indies* In the latter country the 

 large collection of the Indian Museum at Calcutta, so inaccessible by 

 reason of distance to most European zoologists, was examined, and 

 full descriptions of the species were subsequently published in my 

 ' Monograph of the Asiatic Chiroptera.' 



As this is the first attempt to present in monographic form (not 

 being a compilation) a natural history of any of the Orders of Mam- 

 malia, it has been my object throughout, not only to render the 

 discrimination of the different species as easy as possible to those 

 not possessing any special knowledge of the subject, but also, by 

 full descriptions of the species, and by notes on their comparative 

 anatomy, habits, and relative position in the natural series, to make 

 this work as complete a systematic treatise on the Chiroptera as the 

 present state of our knowledge and the space at my disposal would 

 admit of. 



The Classification adopted is the same as that propounded by me 

 in a paper published in 1875 in the 'Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History,' and subsequently again set forth in the preface 

 to my ' Monograph of the Asiatic Chiroptera,' where the grounds 

 on which it is based are fully described and the relative affinities 



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