EHINOPOMA MICKOPHYLLTJM. 
147 
Sudan. Cantor mentions that numbers inhabited the subterraneous Hindu places of 
worship within the Fort at Allahabad and that it was obtained in a cave on an island 
in the Girbee River, in lat. 8° N., in the Malayan Peninsula. It has also been 
recorded from Socotra. 
Three and a half centuries ago Belon encountered this bat in one of the chambers 
of the Great Pyramid. He says in his old French:—“ Quand nous fu/mes retournez en 
la premiere cauite, & marchants plus oultre, trouuaymes quelque petite e^pace a main 
gauche, qui a ain/i e/te rompue; car autrement elle e/t toute ma/siue. Nous y 
trouiiaybies des Souriz chauues differentes aux noy’tres, & a celles que i’ auoye 
auparauent veues dedens le labyrinthe de Crete: car les noftves n’ont la queue plus 
longe que les aey’les, mais celle de la Pyramide, ont une queue qui pa^/e quatre doigts 
oultre les ae/’les, longue comme aux Souriz ” 
A year later he again indicated it very clearly in his work ‘ De la Nature des 
Oiseaux ’ 
Hasselquist also obtained this bat in one of the small Pyramids of Gizeh. The 
specimens he had collected were unfortunately omitted by Linnaeus from the ‘ Iter 
Palaestinum ’ and from the ‘ Systema Naturae.’ They were preserved in the Royal 
Museum at Copenhagen, and when Briinnich ^ described the contents of that Museum, 
in 1782, he found Hasselquist’s specimens there, naming them Vespertiliomicrojihyllus 
and gave a very good figure of one of them. All these facts were pointed out by 
E. Geoflfroy himself, but, strange to say, they have been almost completely overlooked, 
so that he has generally been credited with the naming of the species, instead of 
Briinnich. 
Dobson, in his Catalogue, placed side by side, for comparison, the measurements of 
two perfectly adult animals, the sex of which he did not indicate (one from Egypt and 
the other from Kach), for the purpose of proving the undoubted identity of 
R. hardwickii with the Egyptian hats. The first of the two specimens he stated to be 
“ the type of the species preserved in the Paris Museum” ; but, apart from the fact that 
the type has always been in the Copenhagen Museum, the measurements of the Paris 
specimen given by Dobson preclude its having been the individual described by 
E. Geofiroy St.-Hilaire, because the latter author says that the bat he had before him 
when he wrote was only 54 mm. long, wRereas Dobson’s specimen measures 76 mm. 
from snout to vent. The comparison, however, instituted by Dobson proves that 
individuals of this species in India and in Egypt attain to equal dimensious. 
In the foregoing table of measurements I have included the specimen described by 
Geoffroy, and also one of the types of R. hardimckii, Gray, with other individuals from 
^ Observ. de Plus. Singularitez &c. 15-54, p. 114/2. 
2 1555, ]i\'. ii. chap. 39. 
^ Op. cit. svpra. 
u2 
