MAMMALS. 675 



same tactics are repeated, until it is at last thoroughly exhausted. Club- 

 bing and netting need not be described. 



There are three or four species of true otters, but only our own species 

 distributed over nearly the whole of our country, but nowhere abundantly. 

 Still, immense numbers are taken, the Hudson Bay Company selling over 

 eleven thousand in London in 1873. They frequent streams and ponds, 

 and are caught with steel traps. They are busy and voracious animals, 

 but they have their times of relaxation, and then coasting seems to be their 

 highest enjoyment. Sometimes this is done on wet, clayey banks in 

 summer, or on the snow in winter. Says Goclman : " Their favorite sport 

 is sliding, and for this purpose in winter the highest ridge of snow is 

 selected, to the top of which the otters scramble, where, lying on the belly 

 with the fore feet bent backwards, they give themselves an impulse with 

 their hind legs, and swiftly glide head-foremost down the declivity, some- 

 times for a distance of twenty yards. This sport they continue appar- 

 ently with the keenest enjoyment, until fatigue or hunger induces them 

 to desist." 



Our American badgers are found in the west, and owing to their mode 

 of life their habits are but little known. They live underground either in 

 "burrows which they dig for themselves, or in those of the prairie-dog which 

 they readily enlarge for their needs. They are very secretive in habits and 

 live almost as much below the surface as does a gopher. In some places 

 they are very abundant, and their holes dot the ground so that it is almost 

 impossible for one to ride over it. Prairie-dogs are their especial food, but 

 they will eat flesh of almost any kind. They will try to avoid danger, but 

 when brought to bay they are filled with courage supported by great 

 strength and a formidable armature of teeth and claws. They possess 

 great vitality and will prove awkward customers for dogs of the largest 

 size. The European species is equally plucky, and the sport of badger-bait- 

 ing with dogs has given us the verb, to badger. 



Our badger and the European species are strong-smelling, but they are 

 far excelled in this respect by the stinking badger of the East Indies. Mr. 

 Forbes, speaking of this species, says : " Another slow prowler very often 

 made my evening hours quite unbearable by the intensely offensive odor 

 with which, even in its most inoffensive frame of mind, it hedged its cre- 

 puscular walks for at least a mile around. It was no use to frighten it 

 away ; for if its equanimity were disturbed, it did not haste to its lair as 

 one could have wished. It thickened, instead, the very air with a malig- 

 nant scent that clung to one's garments, furniture, and food for weeks. . . . 

 The native has a superstition that if a man have fortitude enough to eat 

 its flesh, he will have become proof against sickness of every kind." 



