(177) 



NEW OR LITTLE-KNOWN BATS 



from the latter group of islands he had only seen « ein Exemplar 

 in dem Leidener Museum , eine vielleicht nur etwas kleinere 

 Varietat oder Art (Rh. keyensis) hildend, woriiber zu entscheiden 

 aber mehrere Exemplare erforderlich sein wiirden. » This is the 

 only description of Rh. keyensis ever published, and vague though 

 it is we have , from a technical point of view , no other choice 

 than to regard the example in the Leiden Museum seen by Peters 

 as the « type » of Rh. keyensis. Whether this specimen still 

 exists, is unknown to me; in Dr. Jentink's « Catalogue systema- 

 tica^ des Mammiferes » (Mus. d'Hist. nat. Pays-Bas XII. p. 161; 

 Leiden 1888) no example of « Rh. megaphyllus » , nor any 

 example of a bat allied to megaphyllus , from the Key Islands 

 is registered. 



Later on, Prof. Peters must either have forgotten his remark 

 on Rh. keyensis, or he must have given up his attempt to sepa- 

 rate it from Rh. megaphyllus ; in 1881 (1. s. c.) he records 

 « Rh. megaphyllus » from the Key Islands, without any refe- 

 rence to the hypothetical Rh. keyensis. 



In these circumstances I was much pleased to find among the 

 Rhinolophi submitted to me for examination by Marquis Doria 

 a bat of the megaphyllus type from the Key Islands. It proves 

 to be a distinct species, which may be briefly diagnosed as follows: 



A very primitive member of the Rh. simplex group, appa- 

 rently closely allied to Rh. nanus ( ! ) from Goram, with which it 

 agrees in the form of the sella, but differing, externally, by its 

 smaller size and broader horse-shoe. The skull (incomplete) comes 

 nearest to that of Rh. nanus, but the teeth are a trifle smaller. 



p 3 is external to the tooth-row , very small , blunt , about as 

 high as the cingula of the adjacent premolars. p 2 and p 4 in contact, 

 p- in row, with a minute cusp (scarcely observable without a 

 lens) , pointing inwards. 



At present the following primitive species of the Rh. simplex 

 group are known : — Rh. simplex (Lombok) , Rh. fallax (New 

 Guinea), and Rh. megaphyllus (Australia, Louisiade Archipelago); 

 in these species the sella is quite distinctly constricted at the 

 middle. Southwest and west of New Guinea we find the constriction 

 gradually obliterated, the lateral margins of the sella becoming 



(>) Knud Andfbsen, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 1905, II. p. 82. pi. III. fig. 3. 



