British Wild Beasts. 1 75 



So it was with my English badger. And of all animals 

 the " brock " is one of the most suitable for an apparition ; 

 for the colouring and the shape of the beast make its whole 

 body, when it is facing you, look like only the head of some 

 much huger creature. It seemed to me for a second, there- 

 fore, that some subterranean monster had thrust its head up 

 above the ground- But the badger lifted one of its hind- 

 paws and scratched its nose, and then I recognised my 

 visitor. It did not see me, and began to root its way along 

 among the bracken. My botanising tin was h'ing in its 

 path, and the badger came upon it " A trap ! " said the 

 beast, as plainly as ever a grunt said anything, and turning 

 round, my visitor pattered back into the hazels whence it 

 had emerged. 



But there was something very picturesque and very 

 engaging in this unexp>ected verse of poetry. We have very 

 few wild animals, and the sight of one, whether otter or 

 weasel, badger or fox, at its ease and unsuspecting, makes 

 a day's walk memorable to me for ever. " That is where I 

 saw so-and-so," I say to myself whenever I pass near the 

 spot or hear it mentioned. A rare flower — " Sole sitting 

 by the shores of the old romance," makes something of the 

 same impression on me. It carries the place back into the 

 far past Antiquity comes up with us again. 



But poets are averse to badgers.^ They notice "the 

 tod " as being hunted with terriers and " vexed " in barrels. 

 And they are quite content that it should be. Popular 

 errors have no doubt given poets their bias, for the brock 

 is a beast of ill-omen in parts of rural Britain, and the 

 poets' phrase, " uneven as a badger," comes from the mis- 

 taken idea that the legs of the animal were shorter on one 

 side than on the other. Another tradition is to the effect 



* Has the phrase to " badger " a person come from the practice of 

 ba<1gering badgers ? It should properlj therefore mean " to make a 

 banger of a person." 



