MAGAZINE 



OF 



ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY 



ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



I. — A Revision of the Genera of Bats ( Vesper tilionidce ) , and the De- 

 scription of some new Genera and Species. By John Edward 

 Gray, F. R. S., President of the Botanical Society of London, 

 &c. &c. 



Some of the older authors placed these animals with the Birds, 

 but Ray (Syn. Anim. Quad., p. 43,) properly arranged them with the 

 Mammalia, and formed them into a particular group, of which he only 

 knew a single species ; Linnaeus divided the few species he knew 

 into two genera, which, on account of the difference in the number 

 of their teeth, he placed in two different orders, an error which he 

 was not often guilty of committing, and which Pennant, Pallas, and 

 Brisson corrected, by referring them back to a single genus ; but 

 the latter author (Le Regne Animal, 4to,) in 1762, divided in his 

 specific characters, the fruit-eating bats from the insectivorous ones, 

 by the number of their claws ; and this group was long afterwards 

 converted into a genus by Geoffroy, under the name of Pteropus ; 

 Daubenton in 1759 (Mem. Acad. Paris,) described several new- 

 species, and gave some figures of the heads of these animals, which 

 greatly facilitated their determination. Pallas, in 1767> (Spic. Zoolog. 

 6,) when describing many new species, showed that the bats might 

 be divided into sections by the number of their teeth ; and Erxleben 

 (Sys. Anim.) 1777? acting on Pallas's suggestions, divided the bats 

 into two genera, giving to those that have four cutting teeth in the 

 upper and lower jaw the name of Pteropus, and retained in the genus 

 Vesperlilio the other bats ; which he divided into sections according 



VOL. II. NO. 12. K k 



