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Show 1905.] OF THE GENUS RHINOLOPHUS 9 7 the only Rhinolophus in the museum from any of those islands. This is, of course, not beyond the limits of possibility; but it is certainly much more likely that Rh. petersi, as also the vast majority of the Bats in the Calcutta Museum at Dobson's time, came from some part of the Indian Peninsula 01* the Himalayas, the habitat of Rh. rouxi, and far from the home of Rh. acuminatus and its allies. To describe a new species which subsequently proves to be an old one is no rare occurrence, and, as a rule, it does no very serious harm. But the strong emphasising of a purely individual peculiarity, combined with the circumstance that the type had no " locality," caused in this case a series of confusions: Rh. petersi emerged, like a ghost, very unexpectedly at such different places as the Gold Coast, Sumatra, the Himalayas, and S. India. And, curiously enough, the author of the " species " inaugurated the mistakes. When he had returned to London and was working out his ‘ Catalogue,' Dobson had no longer access to the type of Rh. petersi; he had his own short description only, and perhaps some private note. It is quite evident that, in these circumstances and occupied with the study of many other Bats, he lost the precise idea of the type specimen ; he only kept in his memory, as its most important character, its " projecting" connecting process. So it came that he referred a specimen labelled " Gold Coast " to Rh. petersi * ; for it is a genuine acuminatus, beyond all doubt from Java, and Dobson himself would scarcely have been able to tell why he called it petersi instead of acuminatus. Two years later, Dobson had for determination a collection of Bats belonging to the Gottingen Museum; among these he again believed he found a Rh. petersi f . I have had this example for inspection + ; it is neither " Rh. petersi " nor Rh. acuminatus, but Rh. sumatranus. (b) In a paper on some Himalayan Bats, Capt. Hutton § records Rh. petersi from Masuri. All the Bats mentioned by Hutton were presented to the " Indian Museum," and are now in the British Museum. The two specimens labelled " Rh. petersi" are Rh. monticola, a species closely allied to Rh. lepidus ||. * Dobson, Cat. Chir. Brit. Mus. (1878) p. 114. f Dobson, " On some new or rare Species of Chiroptera in the Collection of the Gottingen Museum," P. Z .S . 1880, p. 462. J I am indebted to Geheimrat, Professor Dr. Ehlers, Gottingen, for the loan of this specimen. S Hutton " O11 the Bats of the North-western Himalayas; with Notes and Corrections in Nomenclature by Prof. W . Peters," P. Z.S. 1872, p. 700. II As Hutton's article is one of the very few papers which give information respecting the habits of Himalayan Bats, and therefore has been frequently quoted by subsequent writers, I think it advisable to correct the following errors in the identifications of the four species of Rhinolophus dealt with in that paper:- " Rh. affinis " (p. 696) is Rh. pearsoni ; " Rh. rouxi " (p. 697) is Rh. affinis ; " Rh. minor " (p. 698) is Rh. rouxi; and, as pointed out above, " Rh. petersi " (p. 700) is Rh. monticola. Hutton's Bats were (as also stated in his paper) determined, not by himself, but by Prof. Peters in Berlin. But the mistakes are so strange that they cannot, certainly, be due to Prof. Peters; an extensive confusion of labels must have occurred (I can rather easily, from Peters's point of view, as laid down in his papers, guess the original arrangement of the labels), but the confusion had at all events taken place before the specimens were returned to Hutton. Proc. Z ool. Soc.-1905, Y ol. II. No. V I I . 7 |