278 



BADGER. 



constitutionally, but ill able to endure ; the second ' 

 when accompanied by severe drought, appears to be 

 contrary to its habits ; and may be so by keeping 

 the frogs and mollusca off its pastures during the j 

 night. It does not appear to have been known to 

 the Greek naturalists, at least it has no name in the 

 Greek language. But the knowledge which the 

 Greeks had of nature applied to places to the east 

 and south of Greece rather than to the north and 

 west ; and thus their knowledge lay in the opposite 

 direction to that in which they would have found the 

 badger. The Romans, on the contrary, whose know- 

 ledge did extend to the west, and for some distance 

 at least to the north, not only were acquainted with 

 the animal, but had two names for it, metis and taxits; 

 and sometimes the one, sometimes the other, and 

 sometimes both of these, have been used as the name 

 by modern systematists, since the animal was, very I 

 properly, separated from the bears, of which genus i 

 it was made a species in the system of the great 

 Swedish natura n st. 



It is probable that, in the days of the Romans, the 

 proper locality of the badger lay in a more southern 

 latitude than it does at present, because it is certain 

 that the climate along the line of the Danube was 

 then as cold, if not colder, than the southern shore 

 of the Baltic is at present. It is doubtful, however, 

 whether it ever extended so far to^the south-east, as 

 that the "badgers' skins" which are mentioned in 

 the Bible as forming part of the hangings of the 

 tabernacle prepared in the wilderness could have 

 been the skins of the melis of modern times. If it 

 had been so common in the " wilderness," (which 

 has either undergone great physical changes, or else 

 it must have been a very unlikely and even unnatu- 

 ral haunt for badgers,) it is not easy to see how an 

 animal so common, and of which the skins appear to 

 have been in so much request, could be unknown 

 both to the Egyptians and the Greeks. But, at the 

 time the standard translation of the Bible was made, 

 natural history was in a very imperfect state ; and 

 the translators, in turning the whole book into English, 

 were of course confined to the use of such English 

 names, both for plants and animals, as were then 

 known ; so that, however the nervous vigour of the 

 style then in use by the best writers (now somewhat 

 altered and not for the better) may have been calcu- 

 lated to do justice to the sentiment and the sublimity 

 of the sacred volume, there is no question that the 

 way in which the natural history has been translated 

 is calculated to mislead the ignorant. Therefore, a 

 natural history of the Bible is very much wanted. 

 But it is a work, the proper execution of which 

 would be attended with difficulties of no common 

 magnitude ; and when we consider the brevity of 

 human life, the large portion of it which must elapse 

 before the preparation for such a work is begun, and 

 the vast extent, difficulty, and even incongruity of 

 some of the essential elements, it is a work of the 

 appearance of which in a style worthy of the subject 

 we may almost despair. If attempted by the un- 

 worthy, and bungled, as has been the case with many 

 other important but difficult subjects, the evil will be 

 made worse, the errors more difficult to be eradicated. 

 Without such a work, the progressive natural history 

 of the central parts of the eastern world cannot be 

 made complete, as it wants the beginning ; while the 

 Bible, if we could rightly apply the truths which it 

 contains, would give us facts end fix their date at a 



period anterior to that of any other authenticated 

 history. 



The badger is an animal of very peculiar localities 

 certainly, but it is so fond of concealment, and comes 

 out so much in the dark, that we can hardly describe it 

 as being characteristic of any peculiar climate, or land, 

 or suri'ace, or say what etage of a country, either in 

 its natural or its artificial changes, accords the most 

 with the abundance of its numbers. It is not an 

 animal of the forest, of the dry heath, of the arid 

 \vaste approaching to the sandy state, or of the hnrnid 

 tracts which border upon inundation. There is no 

 broad locality, no general description of surface, which 

 we can call the badger's country, as we call the green 

 savannah the country of the buffalo, the wild upland 

 the country of the deer, or even the sandy plot by 

 the seashore with its short grass and its stunted furze 

 bushes the natural country of the wild rabbit. The 

 best approximation which we probably can make, 

 though it certainly is a loose and wide one, is that 

 the badger is an inhabitant of the country in what 

 may be called an intermediate state between the 

 close forest and the open champaign ; that it indi- 

 cates that state of things in which man should culti- 

 vate, because his cultivation would be attended with 

 advantage, but it is not a sign that man does cultivate, 

 at least to the extreme breadth of the land. The 

 place which the badger inhabits must be a wild spot, 

 and though our information upon that part of the 

 subject is imperfect, it is probable that the pasture on 

 which the badger finds its food must also be in a 

 great measure wild. 



But though the badger does not furnish us with 

 those means of judging from country to animal, and 

 conversely from animal to country, so that if we have 

 half the information cither way, we can arrive at the 

 other half by analogy, which we have in many other 

 species, it is still a very interesting animal, and one 

 the study of which may furnish a good deal of infor- 

 mation. Badgers have no quarrelsome or pugnacious 

 disposition, either against each other or against ani- 

 mals of an}' other kind. They are not strictly social, 

 neither are they altogether solitary. Their common 

 habit is to live in pairs, which are attached to each 

 other, as is understood, for life. But in places which 

 are very favourable for them, more than one pair 

 may be found in the same small copse or brake, or 

 even sometimes in the same burrow ; though it is 

 also said that the male and the female separate during 

 the last stage of gestation and the early one of 

 the suckling. It is probable, however, that this 

 separation extends no farther than in the occupation 

 of different rooms in the same burrow (for all the 

 completely-formed burrows have separate rooms), 

 and the nursery, which is understood to be more 

 exclusively the work of the female, is more spacious 

 than the rest, and more abundantly and completely 

 bedded with grass. The young arc produced in the 

 warm season ; and their number, which is generally 

 from three to five, is perhaps never more than that of 

 the teats of the mother, which is six. They arrive at 

 maturity in two years, though they continue after- 

 wards to increase in size ; and indeed the size is liable 

 to considerable variations, whether chiefly owing to 

 the supply of food is not known. As the season ad- 

 vances they become very fat ; and when the cold sets 

 in they pass into an indolent state, dozing out the 

 time in their burrows, till the heat of the returning 

 season calls them again into action, which is not very 



