No cessation of their activity occurs in winter. When the cold weather begins many gather about barns and houses located near woods or old fields, and thus with the field mice take advantage of the garnered food supplies and shelter. Others remain in their regular haunts, where they frequently burrow long distances in the snow, making networks of tunnels and traveling long distances just below the surface, leaving little raised ridges like the track of a mole on the ground. Their journeys upon and under the surface of the snow appear to be in search of food, as they burrow down to old logs and stumps which make good feeding grounds. Their movements are very active, as they go about either at a walk or quick trot. These fierce and truculent little hunters are wholly beneficial in their habits and should be encouraged in place of being killed on sight indiscriminately, as one of the ordinary mouse tribe. THE RED BAT (Nycteris borealis) (_For illustration, see page 566_) Bats reach their greatest development in the tropics, where a marvelous variety of these curious mammals exist. To the northward the number of species gradually decreases, until eventually, in northern Canada and Alaska, a single species represents the group. The United States, occupying the middle latitudes, has a considerable number of different kinds. Some of these remain throughout the year, hibernating in caves during the period of cold, when insects are not to be had; others wing their way southward like birds on the approach of winter and return in spring. All bats are nocturnal, although individuals of some species occasionally fly about for a time by day and many come out just before or soon after sunset. In this country practically all species are insectivorous, but in Mexico and the West Indies many are fruit-eaters and a few true vampires or blood-suckers. As a rule, bats are clothed in dull colors, but richly tinted coats give a few a more attractive appearance. Of these none has a more striking adornment than that presented by the soft covering of glossy orange-red fur of the red bat. Its large size, about four inches in total length, with a spread of wings amounting to twelve inches, combined with its color, suffices to distinguish it at once from any other northern species. The range of the red bat extends from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific and from Ontario and Alberta in southern Canada south throughout most of the United States to the Gulf coast and southern California; also beyond our limits to Lower California and Costa Rica. The genus to which this bat belongs ranges more widely in other parts of North America; also to South America and across the eastern Pacific to the Galapagos and Hawaiian Islands.