1917.] 



Lang and Chapin, Field Notes on African Chiroptera. 



553 



chapini, but the hairs are shorter, and more of one color throughout. 

 Behind it is a bare space, covered of course when the long hair is laid back. 

 Our four specimens being all males, we cannot say whether the females 

 differ, like those of C. abae, in lacking the tuft. 



In some of the houses at Boma, including that kindly placed at our 

 disposal by the Belgian authorities, these queer little bats were not uncom- 

 mon, spending the day singly or at most in twos, in crevices beneath the 

 roofs of verandas, especially where they joined the main concrete wall of 

 the house. They crawled about actively, and were by no means easy to 

 secure. One was captured with a butterfly net as it flew about in a room 

 at night. 



60. Chserephon (Lophomops) abae sp. nov. 

 Text Fig. 11 (p. 465). 



At the first glance this dull-colored, medium-sized wrinkle-lipped bat 

 seems to possess no great peculiarities, but closer investigation shows a few 

 points of interest. The remarkable crest of the male is practically hidden, 

 since it grows on the back of a nearly triangular flap filling the gap between 

 the anterior bases of the ears. This membrane is usually turned back- 

 ward and in the crestless female covers a hairless spot (Text Fig. 11, p. 565). 

 In the male however it can undoubtedly be moved forward so as to show to 

 full advantage the peculiar adornment, a snuff -brown topknot composed of 

 stiff hairs, the longest of which reach 7 mm. in length and radiate from a 

 common center. 



This bat attains a total length of 4 inches (102 mm.) and a wing-spread 

 of 12 inches (305 mm.); the upper side is uniform sepia. On the ventral 

 surface the more or less distinct median line and the narrow band on the 

 base of the wing membranes are pure white and rather conspicuous, espe- 

 cially as the rest of the fur is either dark or grayish brown. 



Four of these bats were taken in the neighborhood of Faradje in Febru- 

 ary and March from a hollow tree. The twenty-five others, however, are 

 from rocky clefts of a hill near Aba. They lived in numbers in the dark 

 fissures, their presence being at once betrayed by the curious musty smell. 

 Smoking out the bats by burning grass proved in this case unsuccessful, 

 since the smoke was carried away in another direction. We succeeded 

 better by fastening a leafy branch to a pole and swishing it back and forth 

 between the rocks. A few of the bats fluttered to the ground slightly injured 

 but rapidly crept under cover. More than a hundred were flying to and fro 

 in the dim light of the cleft, and several were caught while dodging about 

 our heads, but none even attempted to fly out into the open or to hide in 

 another cranny. Each bat seemed to be intent on returning to its habitual 



