v THE BADGER AND HIS KIN 149 



ern dialects of Great Britain. This last is the con- 

 temptuous epithet that Shakespeare employs in 

 "Twelfth Night" (Act 2, Scene 5) when he makes 

 Sir Toby Belch mutter an aside of annoyance over 

 Malvolio's reading of the dropped letter, " Marry, 

 hang thee, Brock ! " And do you not remember the 

 curious part of "next friend," or counsel and go- 

 between, that Grimbart, the badger, plays in the 

 legend of Reynard, the Fox ? 



It is amazing to see, in such favorable tracts as 

 have been mentioned, how the ground is pitted 

 and honey-combed with old and new burrows of 

 all sorts. The danger of your horse stepping into 

 an open hole is doubled by the chance of his crush- 

 ing through the roofs of unsuspected excavations. 

 Cattle-herding horses must acquire dexterity in 

 avoiding such accidents, or they would break their 

 limbs and risk their riders' necks fifty times a day. 

 I shall never forget a wild morning I once spent 

 near Cheyenne, hunting antelopes with deerhounds. 

 The prairie horses mine was a nervous gray that 

 seemed unable to stand on all four legs at once 

 were eager to enter into the fun, and bore us 

 straight across the country, up the ridges and 

 down the hollows, over or around the clumps of 

 sage and grease-wood, at topmost speed, twisting 

 and dodging to avoid badger-earths, ant-hillocks, 

 prairie-dog holes, and tall bushes; and more than 

 once my horse seemed to take a new flight in the 

 air, when he rose to leap over a thicket, and caught 



