338 Practical Game Preserving. 



before the intended prey is aware of its presence. It will 

 also destroy and consume the eggs of pheasants or 

 partridges, besides those of such other birds as form their 

 nests on the ground, but this to no very considerable 

 extent, for reasons sufficiently obvious. It may, in truth, 

 be allowed that the badger is not of the highly destruc- 

 tive nature of the other vermin of which we have so far 

 taken notice ; and although sometimes a solitary one may 

 take up its residence near to, and commit considerable 

 depredations in, a rabbit warren, still this is no sufficient 

 reason for the wholesale way in which the now rather 

 scarce species are assailed and killed as often as occasion 

 offers. 



The badger is, as far as its habits are concerned, an 

 eminently solitary animal, and they are hardly ever found 

 together, not even with the females of their own species, 

 and the observance by anyone of two badgers in company 

 is an exceptionally rare event. The fact of their constantly 

 sleeping during the daytime, rolled up cosily upon a warm 

 couch of dry leaves, &c., together with the facility with 

 which they are enabled to procure food, tends to keep 

 the brocks in good condition, and they are invariably sleek 

 and fat when captured. 



The burrow is most generally formed in the centre of 

 some thick and close covert situated upon a gravelly or sandy 

 soil, and is dug out rather than burrowed. When digging 

 this holt, it first makes a slight entrance by employing its 

 snout to loosen the earth, which it scrapes away with the 

 fore feet as far back as possible. As in time, however, 

 the loose excavated earth accumulates to such an extent 



