36 
JOURNAL OF MAMMALOGY 
RED BAT AT SEA 
On the first day of September, 1920, when still 3 days out from Philadelphia 
on our voyage from Cape Town, South Africa, I found a red bat (Nycteris borealis 
borealis) clinging to the ledge under the manger of the giraffe box. The record 
may be of interest to American mammalogists. — A. K. Haagner, Pretoria, South 
Africa. 
THE BLACK BEAR AS A DESTROYER OP GAME 
On June 12, 1920, while approaching a camping site on the Lamar River, Yel- 
lowstone National Park, in company with M. P. Skinner, park naturalist, I noted 
a black bear {Ursus americanus) hunting around through the sage brush on a 
nearby hillside. Five minutes later we stopped for the night, and as I descended 
from the machine, I turned my ten power glasses on the bear, and was surprised 
to see that he was making off, at a leisurely gait, with an elk calf in his mouth. 
He paid not the slightest attention to the presumable mother of the calf, which 
followed him anxiously within fifteen or twenty feet; she, in turn, being followed 
by three other cows. Shortly, the bear entered a small grove of aspens into 
which the cows were afraid to follow, and they walked back and forth along the 
border of this for some time. Three of the cows soon dispersed, but the fourth 
wandered about disconsolately until dark. 
When with the cows, the elk calves are reasonably safe, but the latter are usu- 
ally hidden in the brush or forest while their mothers are feeding in the meadows, 
and it is at such times that the bears have a chance to make a meal, which oppor- 
tunity, according to Skinner, they never fail to embrace. I have observed the 
‘‘hidden’' calves in the woods, and have noticed that as long as a person is in 
motion, although only six feet away, the calves remain absolutely still, with 
neck extended along the ground, but the instant the person stops, they are up 
and sprawling through the timber at their best gait. These notes may be of in- 
terest to those who contend that the black bear is harmless to game, and confines 
his attentions to more humble fare. — ^A. Brazier Howell, Pasadena, Calif. 
THE tree-climbing WOLVERINE 
Perhaps no apology is needed for this addition to my note on the tree climbing 
of the wolverine recently printed in the Journal, but I regret that it was delayed. 
Mr. John B. Burnham of New York, who went to Alaska at the time of the Klon- 
dike excitement, tells me that wolverines climb trees, and that this habit is well 
known there. These animals are constant plunderers of tree caches — stores of 
food or other articles placed high up in trees to protect them from the ravages of 
ground dwelling animals — and such tree caches are always built, where this is 
possible, with an overhang to prevent the wolverine, when it climbs the tree, 
from reaching the platform on which the articles are placed. When available, 
sheet iron or tin is sometimes nailed around the trees below the cache to make 
climbing more difficult. 
In the winter of 1897-98, a wolverine one night climbed a single spruce tree 
standing near the corner of Mr. Burnham’s cabin, and pulled down a piece, of 
meat that had been hung on a limb seven or eight feet above the ground. The 
wolverine’s tracks were plain in the snow, and its claw marks on the bark of 
