Tropaeolaceae

Abstract

In 1758, Linnæus knew seven bats, all or which he placed in Vespertilio, the fourth and last genus of the order Primates. The work of the next fifty years, as recorded by Tiedemann in 1808, though it had resulted in the recognition of the order Chiroptera, had not increased the species beyond 14, while the number of genera, even with the addition of the flying lemur, was still only seven. The first subdivision of the order into families appears to be due to Goldfuss, who, in 1820, arranged the genera in four groups, one of which still comprised the flying lemur. To each group he definitely applied the name "Familie." The real foundation for the current classification was, however, not laid by Goldfuss, but by Gray, who published the first of his many papers on bats in 1821. Gray excluded the flying lemur, recognized the two main subdivisions of the order, and applied to the names of families the system of nomenclature now in use. According to this scheme there were two suborders, the Fructivoræ and Insectivoræ, the former containing the families Pteropidæ and Cephalotidæ, the latter the Noctilionidæ and Vespcrtilionidæ. Though Gray's system was not followed very closely during the succeeding fifty years, it was finally given definite form by Gill in 1872 and Dobson in 1875, and since then has been almost universally adopted. The new classification now presented is, in fact, little more than an amplification of that founded by Gray. The increase in our knowledge of the Chiroptera since 1821 has been, however, very great. As we have seen, Linnæus recognized only one genus of bats; Gray placed the number comprised in his four families at about 14. In 1865 Peters divided the group into 10 families and subfamilies, containing, in all, 59 genera. When Dobson published his Catalogue of the Chiroptera in the British Museum, in 1878, he described 401 species, 80 genera, and 14 families and subfamilies. As might have been anticipated, this work, the only complete special monograph of the order, was such a stimulus to the study of bats that since it appeared these animals have received more attention than ever before. In 1904 Trouessart recorded no less than 851 species, 122 genera, and 18 families and subfamilies. It appears, however, that even these numbers are much too small. Detailed study of the skeleton, particularly of the wing and shoulder girdle and of the structure of the tooth cusps, leads me to the conclusion that among the known species at least 173 genera and 36 families and subfamilies should be recoguized. With regard to the species, recent work shows that an enormous increase is to be expected as the characters on which distinctions are based come to be better understood. It seems highly probable that the total number of recognized bats will eventually exceed 2,000 named forms