1002 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



seen 2 adult Badgers trotting along the trail together. At such 

 times they are more ready to fight than to turn aside. 



All of these observations point to an all-season association 

 of the pair. 



Collateral support is found in the ways of the British 

 Badger, which is known to be a model husband and father. 

 Although it is dangerous to rely on such oblique light, for the 

 British Badger is not now even in the same genus with this, I 

 cannot refrain from giving Sir Alfred E. Pease's remarks on 

 the nesting of that amiable species. {Monog. Badger.) 



"He is fond of company; he is monogamous, and clings 

 closely and faithfully to his own wife. With Badgers, as with 

 the human race, the sexes are not precisely equal in numbers, 

 and often, from the force of circumstances, a Badger has to 

 remain a celibate, but he is not a bachelor by choice. He may 

 become a widower, but in either case he will travel far to seek 

 a partner to share his shelter and his lot. It is not altogether 

 rare to find an old solitary dog Badger, who has loved and lost, 

 or taken in late age to a hermit's cell; but he, as often as not, 

 when he failed to secure the companionship of the gentler sex, 

 has found some other male to share his home, when they live 

 comfortably en garcon. 



"Nor do the married pair shun the society of their kind. 

 I have often seen large Badger 'sets' almost as full of Badgers 

 as a warren is of Rabbits. One evening, near my house, I 

 waited an hour of midge-plagued time to watch the Badgers 

 come out from a small 'set,' and was rewarded by seeing a pro- 

 cession of 7 full-grown Badgers emerge from a single hole, and I 

 had them all in full viev/ for something like twenty minutes. 

 As this was in July, they could hardly be one family." 



It is an open question whether the hibernating Badger 

 mates in spring like the hibernating Ground-squirrels, or in 

 the fall like the hibernating Bear. Paul Fontaine states' posi- 

 tively that "they pair in autumn, before they hibernate." 

 This we know to be the case with the British Badger, so that the 

 evidence is strong, though not conclusive. 



* Ibid. 



