THE UNNECESSARY BROCK 295 



" sport." He has not made allowance for those who 

 like to kill badgers, in the words of Mr. W. T. 

 Dymond, " for no earthly reason but the unreasoning 

 love of destruction, which classes us as a race on a 

 level of the worst type of negro." To-day a party 

 of sportsmen, mainly hailing from the town, have 

 come out to celebrate beautiful weather by killing 

 badgers not ours, but the inhabitants of a big sett 

 at the edge of the wood on the neighbouring farm. 

 It is an ideal badgers' home a sett that may have 

 been occupied with few breaks since the time of the 

 Conqueror, or longer. Under the oolitic brash of 

 the district is a bed of soft sand, in which, as one of 

 the hunters says, with slight exaggeration, the badgers 

 can move as easily as a fish through water. Only 

 a good terrier can hold them while the men with 

 spades dig down. But the best of terriers are here. 

 The foxhound officials take more than a sporting 

 interest in the extermination of badgers, for, though 

 Meles and Vulpes generally agree pretty well, when 

 they do fall out there are apt to be some fox cubs the 

 fewer. The huntsman likes to kill off the cleanly, 

 industrious brocks, and give their habitations to some 

 vixen that, after her kind, has fouled her own earth. 

 So he joins the digging-out party with his terriers, the 

 disreputable, smooth-haired one whose face is all scars 

 and the dandified, long-coated one that does not look 

 half so good a dog as he is. 



The main entrance to the sett enters the lower part 

 of a mound on the hillside that looks like an ancient 

 barrow. The hole dips and the mound rises so that 

 in a few steps the terrier is far below the surface, 

 baying the invisible inmate. We listen with the ear 



