132 FIELD NOTES FOR THE YEAR. 



holes. A large badger got in, but managed to escape before 

 I came to the trap. I set it again ; and the next morning, on 

 going to it, I saw from a distance a number of hooded crows, 

 perched in a tree near the place, in a state of great excite- 

 ment. On coming up, however, instead of the badger I 

 found an immense grey cat, closely resembling a wild cat, 

 both in colour and ferocity, and which flew straight at me on 

 my approaching her. Having killed her, I left her near the 

 place, covered over with sand ; the badgers came and 

 scratched her up, and nearly devoured her by the next 

 morning ; so I put traps about the remains of her body ; but 

 they managed to spring every trap without being caught, and 

 for several days they escaped in the same way. The traps 

 were always sprung; the badgers' tracks were all round 

 them, and the baits invariably taken away. At last, de- 

 termined not to be beat, I baited my trap with an apple, as 

 something new and unexpected to them, and immediately 

 caught what I wanted, a fine old badger. 



My old keeper was sitting on a hillock about three o'clock 

 one morning in the beginning of May, watching quietly a 

 few wild geese, which he had discovered feeding in a field 

 not very far off, but out of shot. In this hillock was a 

 badger's hole. Presently he heard a grunt behind him, 

 which he took for a pig ; and looking round he saw, standing 

 in a clover field close to him, an immensely large badger, 

 whose object seemed to be to get into a hole on the hillock, 

 to reach which he had no alternative but to pass within a 

 yard of the man's legs. After they had looked at each other 

 for some time in this way, the badger at last uttering a most 

 ill-natured kind of grunt, suddenly put his nose to the 

 ground, and passing close to the keeper made a rush to the 

 hole, with all his hair standing straight on end, and showing 

 his teeth in so determined a manner, as completely to take 

 away all presence of mind from the old fellow ; so much so, 

 indeed, that he neither shot at him nor obstructed his free 

 entrance to the hole in any way. He tells me that when he 

 has been sitting quietly watching for geese, otters, &c., he has 

 not unfrequently seen the badgers going about together in 

 companies of three or four. 



There was a heavy gale of wind at the beginning of this 

 month. I was out late with the keeper, and just before it 

 commenced we saw a very brilliant aurora borealis, or as they 

 term it here, " The Merry Dancers." He told me that when 



