<DA<HTMOOR 119. 



times commit himself in this way there is proof enough. 

 He has a weakness for young rabbits, which he will dig 

 for in the warren. 



But he is satisfied in the main with humbler fare. 

 The fruits of the earth acorns, roots, beech-mast serve 

 his turn, with worms and mice and beetles. He is 

 partial to wasp-grubs, and it is said that no wasps' nest 

 will long remain unharried in a place which badgers 

 haunt. A captive badger will kill and eat a snake, and 

 has been known to exhibit an amount of skill in handling 

 a viper that suggested previous practice, though as the 

 badger comes out only in the dusk, and daylight never 

 finds him willingly outside his holt, he can hardly be 

 very familiar with such lovers of the sun as the grass 

 snake or the adder. 



On the upper reaches of the Dart, among the woods 

 that clothe the sides of the broad glen which that 

 rushing river has carved among the hills, are haunts 

 after the badger's heart. 



Who crosses by the road alone the wide expanse of 

 Dartmoor has yet much to learn of its beauty. There is 

 indeed a charm in the very wildness of its open land- 

 scapes ; in the bare brown slopes that rise and fall for 

 miles on every hand, here relieved by the bright green 

 of swampy hollows, there broken by the rugged outlines 

 of the tors that lift at far intervals their granite crowns. 

 There is a splendour that passes the painting of mere 

 words in the glory of its autumn colouring, the purple of 

 its miles of heather, the gold of its broad sheets of gorse. 

 But, full of beauty as is undeniably the open moorland, 



