Catalogue of the Chiroptera in the Collection of the British Museum.

Abstract

THOUGH Mr. Dobson's work is modestly termed a “Catalogue,” it amounts, in fact, to a complete monographic essay on what has hitherto been justly regarded as the most difficult and the least understood, as it is the most numerous, of all the orders of mammals. Not only are the families and genera of the Chiroptera well characterised in this volume, and all the known species described in concise though sufficiently explicit terms, but synopses of the members of each genus are added in order to facilitate their determination, and excellent notes on the comparative anatomy, habits, distribution, and position of these animals are given, whenever such information is available. Mr. Dobson, it is true, has had unusual opportunities in dealing with this subject, but it is not the less to his credit that he has taken such good advantage of them. Having commenced his studies upon the bats during his official residence in India, he has been able to make himself personally acquainted with the forms inhabiting that country, and likewise to examine the types of Blyth's descriptions in the Indian Museum at Calcutta, without sight of which it would have been impossible to recognise what was intended by them. In this country the late Dr. Gray turned his attention at various times to the Chiroptera, and besides describing numerous species even more hastily and imperfectly than Mr. Blyth, indulged himself in the evil practice of altering some of the types upon which he had found his genera and species. Having the national collection at his command, Mr. Dobson has been able to reduce all these eccentricities into order. On the continent the accomplished zoologist of Berlin, Dr. W. Peters, is almost the only naturalist who has of late years worked at this perplexing group of mammals. Dr. Peters has published many excellent memoirs on various genera of bats in the Monatsberichte and Denkschriften of the Berlin Academy, in the course of which he has given us an account of his examination of numerous obscure types of the older author. Mr. Dobson has worked up the results of these memoirs into his monograph, and has at the same time had the advantage of examining in the Museum of Berlin the materials upon which Dr. peters has based many of his conclusions. Mr. Dobson has also visited the great museums of Leyden and Paris, and has studied the specimens described by Temminck, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and A. Milne-Edwards, belonging to these collections. In fact he has had under his eyes nearly all the available materials for a study of the group, unless it be the specimens collected by Natterer in the Imperial Zoological Cabinet at Vienna, and a few types lately described by Mr. Allen in America. Under these circumstances Mr. Dobson's so-called “Catalogue” has, as we have already remarked, become a monograph of a very high order of merit, and one which reflects the greatest credit upon the talents and the industry of the author.

Catalogue of the Chiroptera in the Collection of the British Museum.

By George Edward Dobson London. (Printed by Order of the Trustees. I vol., 8vo. 1878.)