512 



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



secured are all from Medje, and they prove that this species varies consider- 

 ably as to color. The dark brown on the upper side may become consider- 

 ably lighter and take on even a reddish or yellowish-brown appearance. 

 That this is merely individual variation is shown by a female with a reddish- 

 brown back that was hanging in a bush (in September) together with her 

 half-grown young, also a female. The latter has a dark-brown back and 

 crown like another adult female, but is much darker than its mother. On 

 the short-haired ventral side the difference between the four specimens is 

 not so apparent. In the fresh adult specimens the iris is dark brown, as are 

 also the nose, ears, interfemoral and wing membranes; the latter show on 

 the under side a dark bluisli-gray bloom from which the whitish digits stand 

 out conspicuously. 



The fine adult male, which was fortunately added in April, 1914, had a 

 broad patch of coarse tawny orange-yellow and gray hairs reaching from the 

 sides of the neck over the shoulders, across the breast, and as far forward as 

 the throat. This peculiar wavy hair was rather unctuous, as a result no 

 doubt of the excretion from the glandular patch of skin beneath. These 

 hairs grow in bundles of ten or more together, whereby a ruffled effect is 

 produced. The females have no specially colored patch on the breast, but 

 show the usual gray or yellowish-brown hair, which however is somewhat 

 longer and slightly kinky. A comparison with the males of Eidolon hehum 

 suggests itself, as they have also a patch of coarse, rather shorter, tawny- 

 yellow hair growing over glandular skin like the males of Myonycteris 

 wroughtoni, but in Eidolon the tawny-yellow hair does not extend as far 

 forward and grows in the ordinary manner, not in bunches. The females 

 too of this species have a patch of yellowish hair but much longer, fine, and 

 silky. 



In many fruit-bats, Eidolon, Epomophorus, Pteropus, Myonycteris, and 

 many others, the patches of coarse hair on the breast, at the base of the wing 

 or on the mantle are distinctive features of the adult males. In the epo- 

 mophorine bats the epaulet is peculiar, being a pocket lined with white or 

 yellow hair which is also coarse. Connected with such patches is always a 

 cutaneous glandular formation. The hairs at least at certain periods are 

 moist or unctuous, sometimes slightly odorous. 



Myonycteris wroughtoni was previously known only from the Likati 

 River, 240 miles west of Medje, where it had been collected by the Alex- 

 ander-Gosling Expedition in 1906. 



