MAMMALS OF LIBERIA 573 
with fresh hair coming in all along the dorsal area from the crown to the root 
of the tail. A second specimen was taken in the forest at Gbanga, where ihe 
seemed to have blundered into a trap set under a dead log near the roots of a 
large tree. Dollman has recorded two others taken on Mt. Barclay, Liberia, 
S by k. H. Bunting. 
CHIROPTERA Bats 
PTEROPIDAE Fruit Bats 
Eidolon helvum (Kerr). Yellow Fruit Bat 
Vespertilio vampyrus heluus Kerr, Animal Kingd., vol. 1, pt. 1, pp. Xvii, 91, 1792: no locality. 
Large, forearm 125 mm.; body above and below, and upper side of legs to toes, brownish- 
yellow. Africa south of the Sahara. 
Several of these bats were brought in to us by a native hunter on the Du, 
who had spied a small colony resting in the shade of a palm top. We did not 
meet with it elsewhere, though no doubt it is common at times. Bittikofer 
observed it only twice. Once at Buluma he watched a “swarm”’ of them until 
midnight about a silk-cotton tree standing by itself. They were silently feed- 
ing upon the blossoms and young shoots of the tree. One was shot late in 
October at Muhlenburg Mission on the St. Paul’s River and later described 
by Jentink as a new species, Leiponyx biittikofert, but it proved to be merely 
~ an old individual in which the claw of the index finger was missing. It was one 
of a number seen at dusk coming from the forest behind the mission and passing 
high overhead southward with a steady, almost owl-like flight. No doubt the 
fruiting season and blossoming of various trees has much to do with their local 
appearance. 
Epomops buettikoferi (Matschie). Bittikofer’s Epaulette Bat 
Epomophorus buettikoferi Matschie, Megachiroptera, p. 45, 1899: Schieffelinsville, Liberia. 
Size large, forearm in males about 100 mm.; color a uniform brown with a whitish belly; 
males have a large whitish tuft of hair at the shoulder. Sierra Leone and Liberia. 
Andersen regards this as a species distinct from HE. franqueti of Central 
Africa, from which it is distinguishable by its slightly larger size and by having 
the third cross-ridge of the palate broadly interrupted in the middle. It is 
perhaps but the northwestern race of that species. Biittikofer found a large 
tree in the graveyard at Robertport inhabited by “whole troops” of this bat 
resting by day in some of the branches. He secured specimens also on the 
St. Paul’s, Junk, and Du rivers, and one of his specimens from Schieffelins- 
ville later formed the type of the species. Miller’s specimen of ‘‘E. franquett”’ 
from Mount Coffee is referred by Andersen to the same, while the latter author 
notes specimens in the British Museum from Grand Bassa, Liberia, and from 
Sierra Leone. 
