34 THE BADGER 



they inhabited for many subsequent seasons, I have never 

 seen one of them. For the last two or three years the 

 earths have been deserted, and the ' bawsons ' either have 

 migrated to other lands, or, as I strongly suspect, have 

 been massacred by the gamekeepers during the years that 

 my shooting was let. 



This raises the question : Are badgers justly classed as 

 vermin-? Do they injure either the farmer's crops or the 

 landlord's game? I clung as long as I could to the 

 pleasing belief that they were harmless creatures, but 

 alas for the bawson! certain nocturnal deeds of blood 

 committed during the present year (1906) have forced 

 me to the contrary opinion. But before giving my own 

 evidence for the prosecution, let us reverse the procedure 

 usual in criminal cases, and put Mr. Alfred Pease in the 

 witness-box for the defence. He wrote an interesting 

 little monograph upon the badger a few years ago, and 

 has spent many a summer night in ambush watching 

 badgers in their haunts. His testimony is that their food 

 is chiefly roots and insects, especially large beetles ; but 

 they will also eat rats and mice, when they can be caught, 

 and they often dig up nests of young rabbits. In short, 

 the diet of the badger is as catholic as that of a pig, with 

 the addition, that he has a very sweet tooth for honey, 

 having been known to enter gardens and upset hives, 

 protected by his dense coat and thick skin against the 

 stings of bees. As a master of foxhounds, Mr. Pease 

 rejects the allegation that badgers destroy fox cubs. In 

 fact, he gives a curious example of a united colony of 

 foxes and badgers. 



'The badgers had made a fine double set of earths on the 

 north side of a hill in a neighbouring larch wood, where no 



