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Show 18^7.] NOMENCLATURE OF INDIAN MAMMALS. 637 P. agyptiacus, and P. stramineus of Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, P. collaris, Iiliger, and some other species. In the British Museum Catalogue of the Chiroptera, p. 70, Mr. Dobson gives his reason for reJ3Cting the earlier title Eleutherura of Gray, proposed in 1844 for Pteropus hottentota = collaris. I think another term of Gray's, Xantharpyia, has priority over Eleutherura. Both appear together, it is true, in the Mammalia of the Voyage of the 'Sulphur,' p. 29, where Eleutherura was first proposed ; but Xanthurpyia had been published in the previous year, 1843, in the ' List of the Specimens of Mammalia in the Collection of the British Museum,' pp. 37, 38, and applied to the three species Pteropus amplexicaudatus, P. agyptiacus, and P. stramineus. It is true that no description of the genus was given, but this is not essential. XI. On HIPPOSIDERUS and PHYLLORHINA. It is, I fear, impossible to admit that the name Phyllorhina cun be used for the group of Leaf-nosed Bats to which the term has been applied by Bonaparte, Peters, Dobson, and others. The reference given by both Peters and Dobson for the original description of the genus is to Bonaparte's ' Saggio di una Distribuzione metodica degli Animali vertebrati,' Rome, 1831, p. 16. Iu this work, which contains no descriptions, and is a mere list of generic names, the genus Rhinolophus is divided into two subgenera thus,- Rhinolophus, Leach. Phyllorhina, Leach. For a long time I was unable to discover where these genera of Leach were published; but Mr. Waterhouse, the Society's librarian, has succeeded in finding the names in that author's ' Systematic Catalogue of the Specimens of the Indigenous Mammalia and Birds in the British Museum,' a small pamphlet issued in 1816 and reprinted by the Willughby Society. In this, immediately following Rhinolophus ferrum-equinum, is "Phyllorhina minuta, small Leaf-nose; Torquay, Devon." It is manifest that the genus Phyllorhina was proposed by Leach for Rhinolophus hipposiderus, and consequently cannot be applied to the genus for which it has been used by Peters, Dobson, and others. Bonaparte, it is true, in his ' Iconografia della Fauna Italica,' a work published at intervals between 1832 and 1841, proposed to transfer Leach's generic name from the smaller Horseshoe Bat to the first section of the genus Rhinolophus in Temminck's 'Monographic de Mammalogie,' 1 vol. ii. pp. 10 et seq., and this section corresponds to the genus Phyllorhina of later writers. Bonaparte's remarks occur in the article describing Rhinolophus ferrum-equinum. But to admit a change of this kind would lead to endless confusion. 1 As the date of this volume ranges from 1835 to 1841, Bonaparte's application of the generic term Phyllorhina to the section defined by Temminck can scarcely have been published before 1836. PROC. ZOOL. SOC-1887, No. XLII. 42 |
