Badger 1009 



he lived on mud. His face, mouth, and tongue were black with 

 mud and much swollen. Nevertheless, his description of the 

 Badger was beyond question. He even said it had five toes 

 on one foot and four on the other. 



The Badger must be considered a valuable animal, as use to 

 surely as we reckon the Gophers a nuisance. The only sin 

 I ever heard charged against it is that the holes it makes 

 endanger the limbs of stock and the lives of horsemen on the 

 plains. But this objection scarcely exists in Manitoba to- 

 day, since we no longer have vast open plains. The work of 

 the Badger is now confined largely to the strips of prairie that 

 exist along the road allowances, where it can do but little 

 harm. 



The pelt is prime about October i. It is of beautiful fur 

 silvery gray and the hide strong and durable, so it is much in 

 use for chair rugs. In price it ranges from 75 cents to ^1.50. 



During the sixty-four years, 1842 to 1905 inclusive, the 

 Hudson's Bay Company collected 81,837 skins of this species, 

 an average of 1,278 for each year. The lowest was 289 in 1904 

 (none at all prior to 1842); the highest, 4,000, in 1891. The 

 average for the ten years, 1895 to 1905, was 2,445. 



Poland's work (p. 131) appears to show that double as 

 many are taken by the other American companies, so that the 

 catch of Badgers for fur may be about 7,000. 



At the London annual fur sale held at Lampson's, March, 

 1906, 5,955 Badger skins were sold. The highest price reached 

 was 19 shillings ($4.56) each for 27 unusually fine first-class 

 skins. More usual prices were 5 shillings (^1.20) to 10 shillings 

 ($2.40) for first-class skins. Inferior skins sold for a shilling 

 (24 cents), or even less. 



