ETYMOLOGY OF NAMES OF MUSTELID^. 21 



after Christ) writes melo, genitive melonis ; and, in the vicinity 

 of Bologna, according to the statement of Diez, the Badger is 

 still called melogna. Elsewhere, however, this word is obsolete, 

 being replaced in the living European languages by various 

 others, entirely different. 



The German word dachs may be traced back to the early 

 period of the Middle Ages : in the quack prescriptions of Mar- 

 cellus of Bordeaux, in the ninth century, is found adeps tax- 

 oninus, Badger's fat, and taxea, used by the above-mentioned 

 Isidor as the definition of adeps, fat, with reference to a still 

 earlier author, is probably the same ; the short form das, as the 

 word still runs in Dutch, is found in the German vocabulary of 

 the ninth century ; the nun Hildegard, in the twelfth, wrote 

 dahsis ; Albertus Magnus, in the thirteenth, daxus. The form 

 taxus or taxo, as a name for the animal itself, occurs in the 

 Latin vocabulary from the period of the eighth century; it 

 may be that this term is related to the pure Latin name of the 

 yew-tree, taxus of Caesar and Virgil [Taxus hraccata Linn.), 

 agreeably to which the initial t straightway becomes fixed in 

 the Eomanic names of the animal, in the Italian, tasso ; in the 

 Spanish, tejon (and tesajo, smoked meat) ; the Portuguese 

 texugo ; while the Old French had its taisson, of which only 

 taniere (from taisniere), meaning particularly a Badger-burrow, 

 and, generally, the den of a wild beast, remains in modern 

 French. The poet Tasso, and the founder of the German 

 postal system, Taxis, derive their family name from dachs, 

 Badger, as the old Roman agitator Sp. Maelius probably also 

 did. The word itself may be originally German, and have be- 

 come naturalized in France, Spain, and Italy with the migra- 

 tions of German races. To derive it from the Sanskrit talcsha 

 (Greek rixrwv), a carpenter, to be taken in the sense of an ar- 

 chitect, is rather far-fetched. Another series of names of the 

 Badger in Northern Europe begins with B, as the French blai- 

 reau, the English badger, the Danish hrolc,* and the Russian 

 horsuk ; but it is not certain that these are all etymologically re- 

 lated. Blaireau^\ in Middle-Age Latin hlerellus, is interpreted by 

 Diez as the diminutive of the mediaeval Latin hladarius^ a grain - 

 merchant (Romanic Mado, late French ble, grain) ; and in support 

 of this it is argued that the English name of the animal, badger, 

 signifies also a dealer in grain. Such connection requires us to 



" " Brock '"' is also found as an English provincialism.— Tr. 



t Which is corrupted, in America, into Braro, Brairo, and Prarow. — Tk. 



