other creature, wild or domestic, or even with man himself, is not an unenviable one. Unlike the domestic animals, he is not born into servitude or to die in early life by the butcher's knife or axe. Happier than man, he lives his life, whether longer or shorter, free from the worries, cares, and the thousand ills which flesh is heir to. The fox's life is free as air. Protected for the most part from the natural consequences of his marauding disposition, fair play is given to him to avoid the punishment he deserves by the exercise of that strategy, activity, and endurance with which he is so abundantly endowed. Two or three days in the three hundred and sixty-five he may have to exert himself more or less to save his brush, or the end may come swiftly and suddenly after a long run; but even so, are there not many of us who would be glad to know that our death would come as swiftly and painlessly to us as to the fox, who, flying for forty minutes before the pack, confident, perhaps, to the last that he is a match for his pursuers, is rolled over in his stride? The sportsman may pity the sinking fox, with every desire to see the victory of the straining pack, in the moment when, after gallantly standing up before hounds, a straight-necked veteran finds he has shot his last bolt, and turns with fire yet in his eye to meet death in its swiftest form.

There is something strange in the mixture of pain with pleasure. My little son comes out cub-hunting with me in the early morning of a September day. He is the picture of delight, sitting on his pony among the hounds, the effigy of enjoyment as he follows them with his and his pony's head just above the high bracken, the incarnation of satisfaction as he receives his first brush and is blooded. He is none the less a little sportsman for sobbing himself to sleep at night with his brush hugged under the bedclothes, because of the thought that the bright little cubs he saw killed will never again run in and out of the wood on the hillside as of yore. I look into his room the following day, and find him in his night-shirt busy extracting the tail-bone from his trophy, and he stops in his work only to ask when the hounds will be out again.

The power of enjoying hunting of any sort is no evidence of want of tenderer feelings. It may be that the days of sport are numbered by the exigencies of what is termed the progress of civilization; but whether men's hearts will be braver, their bodies and minds healthier, or their natures kindlier and happier for the change, only time may show. All this is something in the nature of apology; but, excuse or none, thousands are conscious that the nearest approach to pure unmixed pleasure that they have known has been derived from the chase, where cares are forgotten, pulses quickened, eyes brightened, and the mind refreshed. About conscious or unconscious vicarious sacrifice with regard to the badger I will not say more than this, that the baiting of an animal in confinement, even though he be but the scapegoat for a thousand of his kind, is so repugnant to humanity, and so likely to breed cruelty, that though I lament his imminent extinction I would say, "perish Meles taxus" rather than let him pay this price for the continuance of his race, and, whatever view he might have himself, I would refuse him the option.

The badger has made a wonderful struggle for existence, and may linger on for many years yet in the more secluded corners of England and Wales (in Scotland he is almost extinct), but he owes all to his own mysterious silent ways, and nothing to man's mercy in the matter. The intelligent and unprejudiced wearers of velveteen, who, with the tacit consent of their masters, have by means of the steel trap, flag-trap, and gun, exterminated and banished for ever the most interesting of our animals and the most beautiful of our birds, have hitherto failed in their ruthless attempt to rid earth and heaven of everything but furred and feathered game, so far as the badger is concerned. In many English counties, however, the badger has given in before ceaseless digging, snaring, and shooting, and the silent covert where he had his earth, where he dug and delved and made his wonderful subterranean stronghold, knows him no more. He has gone with the polecat, the pine marten, the wild cat, the harriers, the buzzards, and a host of the brightest and loveliest of our birds. Guiltless of the crimes of his fellow-victims against game, he was and is still ignorantly classed under that all-embracing word of the keeper, "vermin." There are few who lament his disappearance save perhaps the makers of shaving-brushes, and the old people whose faith in the efficacy of "badger-grease" can no longer find the opportunity of exercising the same. This faith is an old one. I read in the Sporting Magazine, 1800, volume xvii.—"The flesh, blood, and grease of the badger are very useful for oils, ointments, salves, and powders, for shortness of breath, the cough of the lungs, for the stone, sprained sinews, coll-achs, etc. The skin, being well dressed, is very warm and comfortable for ancient people who are troubled with paralytic disorders." Evidently a few badgers in the good old days supplied the place of the country doctor. About the fancied or really mischievous habits of the badger I shall have something to say later on.

PART II

The badger (Meles taxus, or Ursus meles) is known under various aliases, viz. the Brock (Danish Broc, Erse Broc, Welsh Brock), the Pate, and the Grey. Of these the Brock is perhaps the commonest, and is the name most used in the north of England. There is an expression common in the north that would lead the ignorant to believe that a badger perspires, or sweats, viz. "sweating like a brock." In Yorkshire I often hear a man say, "Ah sweats like a brock," and the user of this elegant metaphor innocently imagines he is perspiring like a badger. But "brock" is the old north-country word for the insect known as "cuckoo-spit" (Aphrophora spumaria), which covers itself in the larval state with froth and foam (cf. Welsh broch, foam)—vide Atkinson's Dictionary of the Cleveland Dialect. In parts of Cornwall and Wales the word "Grey" may be in use, but I myself have only come across it in books, more especially old ones. Though able to boast these several titles, there is but one species known in Europe, and in general appearance he is the same animal, though varying locally in size and shade of colour. He has been classed as belonging to the bear tribe, but the badger is really a single species and a sub-genus in itself. The dentition of a badger is half tuberculous and half carnivorous, and in this respect approaches the martens.

About few animals has there been more nonsense written in regard to habits and anatomy, and for many of the popular notions concerning the badger there is no foundation whatever. In the ancient books descriptive of sport and wild animals we read that there were in England two kinds of badger—the one as we know it, and the other a "pig-badger," with cloven hoofs and other attributes of the porker. It is astonishing how these old authors drew upon their imagination, and where they found suggestions for their errors. In this case it may be they were misled by the custom, which still continues, of distinguishing between the dog and bitch, or male and female badger, by using the terms boar and sow; or it may be the idea dawned whilst they ate their rasher from a badger ham!

There are