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Show 116 MR. K. ANDERSEN ON BATS [May 16, Distribution. From Transcaspia and the Euphrates Valley through Southern and Central Europe, exclusive of the Spanish Peninsula. 1 4 / R h in o l o p h u s f e r r u m - e q u in u m o b s c u r u s Cabrera. Rhinolophus ferrum-equinum obscurus Cabrera Latorre, Mem. Soc. Espan. Hist. Nat. ii. (1904) p. 257. Diagnosis. Smaller than the typical form. Details.-(1) Compared with the typical form: see above, p. 114. (2) Compared with the Eastern races : the small size, combined with the narrow horse-shoe, make it readily distinguishable. The skull is apparently slightly smaller than in nippon. Dentition (4 skulls). As in the typical form. Distribution. Spanish Peninsula, with the Balearic Islands. Algeria*. General Remarks on the Rhinolophus simplex Group. The place of origin.-Of all the existing forms, the Australian Rh. megaphyllus is one of the most primitive in dentition. But it is very unlikely that the Australian Continent has been the place of origin of the group. Rh. megaphyllus is the only Australian species of the wThole genus; this might suggest the assumption that it is an immigrant into the country, rather than an ancient inhabitant: secondly, Australia is the extreme eastern border for the group (as well as for the genus), no species being known from the islands to the east of the Continent; it would probably not be so, if Australia had been a centre of dispersal for the group: thirdly, megaphyllus has at least two characters which certainly are not primitive-the large nose-leaves, and (probably as a consequence of that) the rather broad nasal swellings : fourthly, megaphyllus looks extremely like an enlarged, continental representative of the Lombok species, Rh. simplex (just as Rh. rouxi is the larger, continental representative of Rh. borneensis). These arguments seem to support the conjecture that, not the Australian Continent, but the " Indo- Australian Transitional Tract," now broken up into numerous larger and smaller islands, and still inhabited by such very primitive forms as simplex, truncatus, nanus, celebensis, and borneensis, has been the centre from which the group spread eastwards and westwards. Differentiation f .-The ancestral species seems to have divided into two branches, an eastern and a western. In the eastern, more primitive branch the sagittal crest does not reach quite so far forwards as a point corresponding to the middle of the orbit; in the western the temporal fossa is comparatively a little wider, and the sagittal crest produced forwards more or less beyond that * The type of Eh. f obscurus, in the Madrid Museum, is from Valencia, Spain. As will be seen, X take the name in a wider sense. Valencia specimens wore separated by Prof. Cabrera, as a distinct subspecies, mainly on account of a difference in the ratio between the length and breadth of the horse-shoe. In a large series of ferrum-equinum from Europe and W . Asia there is, however, no small" and quite ndividual, variation in this respect. f Compare the diagram on p 120. |
