THE FAMILIES AND GENERA OF BATS. 
By Gerrit S. Miller, Jr., 
Assistant Curator, Division of Mammals, XJ. S. National Museum. 
INTRODUCTION. 
In 1758, Linnaeus knew seven bats, all of which he placed in Ves- 
pertilio , the fourth and last genus of the order Primates. The Avork 
of the next fifty years, as recorded by Tiedemann in 1808, though 
it had resulted in the recognition of the order Chiroptera, had not 
increased the species beyond 14, while the number of genera, even 
with the addition of the flying lemur, Avas still only seven. The first 
subdivision of the order into families appears to be due to Goldfuss, 
who, in 1820, arranged the genera in four groups, one of Avhich still 
comprised the flying lemur. To each group he definitely applied 
the name “ Familie.” The real foundation for the current classifi- 
cation was, however, not laid by Goldfuss, but by Gray, who pub- 
lished the first of his many papers on bats in 1821. Gray excluded 
the flying lemur, recognized the tAvo main subdivisions of the order, 
and applied to the names of families the system of nomenclature now 
in use. According to this scheme there were two suborders, the Fruc- 
tivorse and Insectivorae, the former containing the families Pteropidse 
and CejDhalotidae, the latter the NoctilionidaB and Vespertilionidae. 
Though Gray’s system was not followed very closely during the suc- 
ceeding fifty years, it was finally given definite form by Gill in 1872 
and Dobson in 1875, and since then has been almost universally 
adopted. The new classification now presented is, in fact, little more 
than an amplification of that founded by Gray. The increase in our 
knowledge of the Chiroptera since 1821 has been, however, very great. 
As we have seen, Linn8eus recognized only one genus of bats; Gray 
placed the number comprised in his four families at about 14. In 
1865 Peters divided the group into 10 families and subfamilies, con- 
taining, in all, 59 genera. When Dobson published his Catalogue 
of the Chiroptera in the British Museum, in 1878, he described 401 
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