FEBRUARY 35 



effort on my part to get foxes to breed and stay had succeeded. 

 No sooner, however, was a colony of badgers established than 

 foxes haunted the holes and covert. In a succession of years 

 there was as certain to be a litter of fox cubs in the badger 

 earth as a sunrise on the morrow. The foxes and badgers 

 frequented both sets indiscriminately till March. When the 

 vixen lay in, the badgers abandoned the set of holes where she 

 was, and restricted themselves to the other set some twenty 

 yards away.' l 



Foxes are poor diggers, fain to avail themselves of the 

 superior powers of these allies ; but one year these allies 

 fell out. Two vixens lay in at the badgers' expense, and 

 reared litters of four and seven respectively, till the cubs 

 were about one-third grown. 



' There were then,' says Mr. Pease, ' to my knowledge, at 

 least four badgers and twelve foxes in these two earths. 

 On one or two occasions the stillness of the night was 

 broken by the veriest pandemonium at the earth.' The 

 hospitality of the badgers had been overtaxed. War 

 broke out, and as badgers are fiercer biters than foxes, the 

 intruders got the worst of it, and several were slain. 

 Amicable relations were renewed in subsequent seasons, 

 and ' all through the year there are foxes in the earth ; 

 and this spring (1898), as heretofore, a litter of cubs has 

 been raised.' 



And now let me bear sorrowful testimony for the 

 prosecution. The badgers which I established at 

 Monreith twenty years ago having disappeared as afore- 

 said, the gentleman who rents most of my shooting 

 thought he would indulge my hobby by turning down 

 some more. Accordingly, early in the present year (1906), 

 he released a fine pair of brocks in a pheasant cover, 



1 The Badger ; a Monograph (p. 72), by Alfred Pease ; London, 1898. 



