June 1, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



565 



Tomah, at Hayward, and on the other reservations 

 (Carter School, etc.). Beside these there are 

 many large high schools which need maps, some of 

 them at places listed above, others at various 

 cities. 



Of course topographic maps are quite as impor- 

 tant for the smaller cities and villages and for the 

 country schools as for the places listed above. Wis- 

 consin ought not to lag behind Ohio, New York, 

 West Virginia, or any other state, or behind Eng- 

 land, France, Germany, or Italy, all of which are 

 completely mapped, in providing tojjographie maps 

 for educational use. 



In addition to the very necessary "local use of 

 topographic maps of the home area, it is desirable 

 that students in one region should use the maps of 

 other parts of the state. Pupils in the Milwaukee, 

 Racine, Madison, Superior, and other high schools 

 ought to have a chance to study topographic maps 

 of the vicinity of La Crosse, Eau Claire or Ashland, 

 where there are no maps as yet. Students in the 

 country schools need them even more. College stu- 

 dents at Beloit, Bipon, Milton, Carroll, Watertown, 

 Marquette and Milwaukee-Downer, and normal- 

 school students at Platteville, Whitewater, Mil- 

 waukee and Superior, where there are topographic 

 maps, need maps of the other four fifths of Wis- 

 consin where there are none. 



At the University of Wisconsin we need not only 

 the completed topographic sheets of the adjacent 

 country, which our students now use extensively in 

 laboratory work and field study, but maps of all 

 other parts of the state, for our students come 

 from everywhere in the state, they go back to all 

 parts of the state to work or to teach, and we can 

 ■ not adequately study other parts of Wisconsin with- 

 out maps of these decidedly different areas. The 

 same thing applies to the other colleges, to all the 

 normal schools, the large high schools, the country 

 schools and the educational system generally. The 

 State Geological Survey is considering a plan of 

 publishing and distributing lists of topographic 

 maps for schools of varied size and situation, with 

 simple, comprehensive directions for their use in 

 classes: this can not be done effectually until much 

 more of Wisconsin is covered by topographic maps. 

 Very truly yours, 



Lawrence Maktin 



winter activity of the brown bat, 



vespertilio fuscus (beauvois), 



at brooklyn, n. y. 



The sporadic appearance of Vespertilio 

 fuscus on mild winter evenings, in the lati- 

 tude of New York, is a well-known phe- 



nomenon,^ but the following account describes 

 altogether extraordinary behavior on the part 

 of a bat of this species. 



A few minutes after five o'clock p.m., on 

 February 14, 1917, Mr. George P. Engelhardt, 

 of the Brooklyn Museum, and the writer en- 

 tered the Brooklyn Botanic Garden with the 

 purpose of finding a mocking-bird that had 

 been observed to be wintering in the section of 

 the grounds devoted to a Japanese garden. 

 While we were hunting through a copse of 

 evergreens bordering the small frozen lake, 

 we were astonished to see a bat flying above 

 the ice. The creature made several trips back 

 and forth, over a distance of seventy or eighty 

 yards, passing so close to us that we had no 

 difficulty in recognizing the species. It circled 

 about just as though it were pursuing insects 

 over the water on a summer evening, except 

 that its flight was slow and obviously labored, 

 and we expected to see it drop at any moment. 

 Presently it fluttered westward, beyond the 

 end of the lake, and seemed to descend on a 

 grassy meadow. We hastened in that direc- 

 tion, searching the ground, but, as we saw no 

 more of the bat, Mr. Engelhardt left the 

 Garden. 



I then walked to the Botanical Laboratory 

 in order to note the temperature, which was 

 30° F. The afternoon had been cloudy, and 

 the setting sun shone only as a red ball 

 through the calm, chilly, misty air. It is worth 

 remarking that the first slight thaw after a 

 protracted period of severely cold weather had 

 occurred on this date. On the morning of the 

 previous day, February 13, the thermometer 

 had registered -)- 3° F., in this part of 

 Brooklyn. 



Eeturning to the edge of the lake at 5 :25 

 P.M., I saw the bat again, and ran after it, but 

 soon lost sight of it. Then, as I approached 

 the outlet of the lake, I spied it on a sheet 

 of thin ice almost surounded by the rimning 

 water of the brook, three feet above a small 

 waterfall. While I stood quietly within ten 

 feet of it, the bat crawled rapidly about the 

 ice, lapping it with its tongue. ISText it 



1 Murphy and Nichols, Sci. Bull. Brooklyn Inst. 

 Mus., Vol II., No. 1, 1913, p. 7. 



