148 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 



an indeterminate gray. The sharply contrasted 

 stripes of white and dark brown upon its counte- 

 nance would be visible when anything could be 

 seen at all, and would instantly apprise any creat- 

 ure what kind of visitor was approaching. These 

 stripes, then, are really excellent examples of what 

 Mr. A. R. Wallace calls " recognition colors," and 

 frequently also of "warning colors." Man or brute 

 catching a glimpse, in the shadow of a hole, of this 

 clownish visage, as impersonal as the bodiless grin 

 of the Cheshire Cat that astonished Alice in Won- 

 derland, would know at once that a badger's form 

 and ferocity were behind it, and would act accord- 

 ingly. An exact parallel is found in the black- 

 footed ferret, whose dwelling-place and methods 

 of underground foray are similar to those of our 

 subject, and which is conspicuously marked only 

 on the face. In neither case would awkward mis- 

 takes arise when friends or allies met in the corri- 

 dors of their own or an enemy's castle, for their 

 very foreheads would bear the family crest. The 

 badger's name itself is a curious historical affirma- 

 tion of this scientific proposition. It means simply 

 the wearer of a badge, the marked animal. The 

 old French blaireau, still current among the 

 French-Canadians of the far Northwest (in the 

 corrupt form "braro"), had an identical signifi- 

 cance ; and apparently the same is true of the 

 early English term brock, probably of Celtic 

 origin, which survives to this day in the north- 



