486 



Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXXVII, 



noticeable feature of the crepuscular landscape as the larger fruit-bats. 

 The latter really command attention by their great flights continuing for 

 weeks at a time across country. Their noisy voices cannot be compared 

 with the faint squeaks of even a dozen hawk-bats (Saccolaimus peli) though 

 they may appear regularly on the village square. Hardly anybody pays 

 attention to the few little bats (Hipposideros, Nycteris, Rhinolophus) that 

 occasionally enter lighted rooms. By infesting double-roofed houses or 

 uninhabited rooms, they make themselves a nuisance, since the smell of 

 their excrement soon becomes unbearable in the moist atmosphere. When 

 emerging from their dusky places of refuge, they scatter over the landscape 

 so that even on clear, moonlight nights one seldom sees more than 20 or 30 

 hunting, each one separately. They never appear in such numbers as 

 feeding flocks of swallows, swifts or bee-eaters, even near places where their 

 colonies are large. 



The families of African insectivorous bats have no great preference for 

 either rain-forest or bushveldt. All of them, except the Megadermidse 

 and Rhinopomidse, furnish an almost equal number to both zones. The 

 species are perfectly endemic to either, just as distinct at least as birds of 

 the forest and birds of the plains. The kinds of insects these bats feed 

 upon in either area are perhaps the decisive factor that makes them stay 

 in their respective environments. With this in view the species contained 

 in the present collection may be classified as follows : 



Habitat chiefly 







in forest 



in bushveldt 



in both 



Emballonuridse 



4 species 



1 



2 



1 



Nycteridae 



5 " 



2 



2 



1 



Megadermidse 



1 





1 





Rhinolophids) 



9 " 



3 



5 



1 



Vespertilionidse 



22 " 



10 



11 



1 



Molossidae 



19 " 



9 



10 





The following 



24 forms are characteristic of the 



rain-forest. 



Some are 



still found as far 



as fifty miles beyond its confines 



in the more extensive 



forest galleries. 



Emballonuridce 

 Saccolaimus peli 



Nycteridce 



Nycteris avakubia 

 " arge 



Rhinolophidce 



Hipposideros caffer niapu 

 " langi 



Vespertilionidai 



Myotis bocagii cupreolus 

 Pipistrellus musciculus 

 Scotozous nippelii 

 Eptesicus tenuipinnis 



" minutus minutus 

 Mimetillus moloneyi 

 Pachyotus nigrita nux 

 Glauconycteris humeralis 



