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of eighty species, which belong to this family, the two most remarkable are the purely blood-sucking forms Desmodus and Diphylla, which present an extraordinary modification of their digestive organs, specially adapting them for a diet of blood. These little animals, in fact, are those which have given such a bad reputation to the whole family of Vampires, though it was formerly supposed that the Vampirus spectrum, and other larger forms of tropical America, were likewise sanguinivorous in their habits. But this large Bat is now known, like many other representatives of the same family, to subsist mainly upon fruit, whilst other Vampires feed on a mixed diet of fruit and insects, or on insects only; and others again of the larger forms are said to prey chiefly upon the smaller members of their own order.

(c) Summary and Deductions as regards the
Order Chiroptera.

Table of the genera of Bats, showing the approximate number of species found in each of the six Regions.

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(c) Summary and Deductions as regards the
Order Chiroptera (continued).

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(c) Summary and Deductions as regards the
Order Chiroptera (continued).

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DEDUCTIONS

1. The Order of Chiroptera, or Bats, contains about 530 known species which are divided into ninety-five genera and six families.

2. They are found in every part of the world except within the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, and even in many islands where no other mammals occur.

3. The Fruit-bats (Pteropodide) are met with only in the Old World, and mainly within the tropics.

4. The Vampires (Phyllostomatida) are entirely restricted to the Neotropical Region, except two or three species (out of eighty) which have passed over the boundaries into the Nearctic Region.

5. Two forms of the Vampires (Desmodus and Diphylla), having their dentition and digestive organs specially modified for that purpose, feed on the blood of living animals.

SECTION IV.-DISTRIBUTION OF RODENTS

Rodents are by far the most numerous of all the Orders of Mammals, comprising, according to a moderate calculation, nearly 1400 species which are arranged in 159 genera belonging to twenty-one distinct families. They are also among the most universally distributed of terrestrial mammals, being found in all latitudes high and low, and abundant in every part of the earth except Australia, where they are feebly represented by a few genera and species. The Rodents, especially the Mice (Muridæ), to which family rather more than half their number belong, are still imperfectly known; their arrangement and classi

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