in view, sitting with bowed fore-legs and his head turning on his lithe outstretched neck, scenting the night air. There is nothing to excite his suspicion, so he shambles to the nearest tree, puts up his fore-feet and rubs his neck, smells round the well-known trunk, and having satisfied himself that all is as usual, sits for awhile admiring the limited landscape before him. He then shuffles a few yards from the earth, scratches the soil here and there as if to keep his digging tools in order, and returns to the bottom of the tree. Another pied face appears, and more quickly than the first she trundles off to join her mate, and they bounce along one after another over the earths, round the trees, down one hole and out at another, and then rest awhile outside the earth they first emerged from. Three more come forth, and go through very much the same programme as the first, snorting and bumping along one after the other and one against the other.

Presently one takes off into the thickest covert. You can hear him bumping along, sweeping through the bracken and crackling the dead wood. Presently the others come past you, tumbling along so close that you could hit them with your stick. Probably they take no notice, but if you wink, wince, or move they will shamble back to the earth and watch you for ten minutes. It is then a trial for your nerves. If you move you have seen the last of them for the night, but if you succeed in being perfectly still they will recover sufficient confidence to sally forth again, but will take off quickly in different directions for their night's ramble. Then at last we may raise our stiff limbs and turn our steps through the dark woods, leaving the fox and badger to their devices, and once more frightening the rabbits which flash past us as we wade homewards through the grass heavy and wet with dew. We have made no startling discovery on this our first night together by the badger "set," but probably we have made a better acquaintance with badgers in this hour than we could have gained in any museum of natural history, with the assistance of the most erudite Fellow of the Zoological Society.

To understand and appreciate all sides of the badger's character you must see him in war as well as at peace; and such knowledge has to be purchased by great labour and bodily fatigue. In the name of sport, as in the name of liberty, great crimes are often committed. There are those who look upon hunting of all sorts as cruel and degrading, and cannot understand the pleasures of a chase involving the distress of pursuit or pain to any animal. I have a certain sympathy for such sentiments, and yet, paradoxical as it may appear, my very love of animals increases my passion for hunting them. Besides the longing to come to close quarters with them, the desire to possess or to handle them, there is the natural ambition to be even with them. There is an unwritten code of honour in the field which, if followed, makes the struggle of wits and strength, of skill and endurance, a fair one, and one in which alone many a valuable lesson out of Nature's book can be taught. To relieve any tender consciences amongst my readers I may here declare, without wishing to reflect on brother sportsmen whose methods are more Cromwellian, that when victorious in the war with a badger, when, after many a hard-fought battle in his subterranean fortress—when mine and counter-mine, tunnel, shaft, and trench have driven him fighting to his last stand in his deepest and innermost citadel, and he has been forced to capitulate—I have never abandoned him to a victorious soldiery howling for blood, but have always given him honourable terms. I have never willingly or wantonly killed a badger; he has invariably become a pampered prisoner, or been transported to some new home, where some one whom I had interested in his species was prepared to give him protection, and a new start in life. Among those who have given my badgers protection I may name Mr. Edward North Buxton, who has done so much to maintain the natural beauty of Epping Forest, and to protect wild life within its borders. I know of several thriving colonies of badgers within the forest precincts descended from my prisoners of war.

I have kept many badgers in confinement, but never to "try" my dogs, and all my terriers learnt their trade in legitimate fashion. Badger-baiting I unreservedly condemn—it is as much a profanation of sport as coursing bagged hares in enclosed grounds. There are degrees of wickedness, and when a badger is placed in a properly-constructed badger-box there are few terriers that would not be vanquished in the encounter. The figure below illustrates the correct box.

Fig. 1.

One of the atrocious methods by which the badger was baited in the last century is described and denounced in volume xii. of the Sporting Magazine, 1788. "They dig a place in the earth about a yard long, so that one end is four feet deep. At this end a strong stake is driven down. Then the badger's tail is split, a chain put through it, and fastened to the stake with such ability that the badger can come up to the other end of the place. The dogs are brought and set upon the poor animal, who sometimes destroys several dogs before it is killed."

Badger-baiting, it seems, was the price the race had to pay for its existence, and with the happy disuse of a brutal sport the harmless badger has been doomed to extinction. The only method by which any British wild animal can be preserved from extinction in this age of what is termed progress, is to hunt it. Who can doubt, that if fox-hunting and otter-hunting were stopped to-day, both these creatures would be extinct within the next few years? It may be a hard bargain to make with them, but considering their own crimes of violence, and their incompatibility with "civilization," it does not seem to be a too severe condition to impose on the fox and the otter, that if they are permitted to live they must at least submit to the risks and fortunes of the chase. Not being able to do more than speculate on the intellectual and nervous capacity of animals, we are apt to assign to them some measure of human powers of thought and feeling. Undoubtedly they are physically less sensitive, and we probably err when we ascribe to them more than a slight ability to anticipate, or credit them with such sentiments as anxiety, mental distress, and those thoughts and sensations that in the main make pain intolerable. Those species that have long been associated with man have, I think, a greater capacity for suffering. The individuality of each domestic race has been developed; the difference of temperament and character of each individual becomes more marked, and more or less humanized, according to the influences by which it is surrounded. There is a more uniform character and greater similarity of temperament among wild animals, and the more refined the civilization and the more cultivated the senses, the more sensitive will the whole animal become. This may be seen in the most common of Nature's operations. The wild beast produces its young with ease and without pain. With woman, raised amidst the refinements of civilization, the same operation is with every precaution and assistance sometimes a dangerous, always an agonizing ordeal.

No, the terms are not hard. Take the case of a fox, the most hunted of animals. The ordinary lot of a fox compared with that of any