OCR Text |
Show 96 MR. K. ANDERSEN ON BATS [May 16, sense of the term*, there are only two alternatives: it is either Rh. rouxi or a species of the Rh. acuminatus section. I have not the slightest hesitation in referring the name as a synonym to the former species. As, however, Dobson himself later 011 applied the name to two Bats of the acuminatus section, it will only be necessary to give evidence, from his own description, that he was mistaken. The only important points in the description of " Rh. petersi " as given by Dobson in 1872 and 1876, i. e. at the time when he had access to the type specimen, are the following (the italics are mine)- (1) The nose-leaves are " as in Rh. acuminatus, except the upper border of the posterior connecting process, which is much less acute." This statement alone would be sufficient. I11 acuminatus the shape of the sella and lancet is very much as in rouxi, but the connecting process, both in acuminatus and in all its allies (sumatranus, calypso, audax), is projecting and pointed; there is, in this respect, no difference between the species of the acuminatus section, and there is also no appreciable individual variation. When, therefore, Dobson in this decisive point (the chief character of the whole group to which acuminatus belongs) declares his Rh. petersi to be very different from acuminatus, it may safely be said that it has nothing to do with that group. Dobson had evidently before him an example of Rh. rouxi with a slightly raised connecting process (" much less acute " than in acuminatus); such individuals are by no means rare ; there are several in the British Museum, and the peculiarity is purely individual. Dobson found, quite naturally, that this peculiarity recalled that shape of the connecting process which had been described, one year earlier, by Peters in a species called by him Rh. acuminatus t, and, consequently, he compared it, in his paper, with this latter species, at the same time emphasising that there was a considerable difference. (2) The figure (side view) in Dobson's ‘ Monograph,' however bad it is, can scarcely represent the shape of the connecting process in acuminatus. Dobson has, no doubt, called the attention of his artist to the connecting process of the specimen to be figured as Rh. petersi, and the artist, in due obedience, has made his best to " emphasise " that point: this may account, I think, for the process being somewhat more exaggerated than in ordinary individuals of rouxi; but it is still not the process of an acuminatus. (3) The measurements of petersi are, without any exception, perfectly \\ke those of several unquestionable specimens of rouxi measured by myself; there is not the slightest indication of a difference. (4) The type of petersi is from " India, precise locality unknown." The acuminatus section is distributed over Sumatra, Engano, Java, and Lombok. When Dobson wrote his ‘ Monograph,' there was not, in the Calcutta Museum, any specimen of any species of Rhinolophus from those islands; so that, if Rh. petersi were a member of the acuminatus section, the type, without locality, would have been |