68o 



THE NATURE BOOK 



RECONNOITRING. 



they gradually resume their activity, and 

 at about the March equinox they have 

 a complete spring-cleaning and a second 

 re-littering of their nests. This is in 

 anticipation of the arrival of the cubs. 

 The normal gestation of the Badger 

 is about seven months. It is probable 

 that the cubs are weaned at about six 

 weeks, and so the parents come back to 

 the pairing season once more (barring 

 accident Badgers pair for life), and the 

 annual cycle recommences. 



In an animal whose burrowing power 

 is so remarkable (in almost every district 

 where Badgers are plentiful there are 

 traditions of vast subterranean galleries 

 extending a mile or more and reaching 

 a depth of at least a hundred feet), whose 

 enormous strength is combined in most 

 cases with gentleness and extreme shyness, 

 and whose persistence as an unaltered type 

 from very early times is generalh' admitted, 

 one expects naturally to find unique 

 peculiarities of structure. I will leave 

 my photographs to give a general idea 

 of the Badger's coloration, and of the 

 extraordinary articulations of his man- 

 dibles, which remain locked to the skull 

 even after the powerful muscles and 

 ligaments which control them have been 

 completely removed. It is evident that 



with an arrangement of this kind the 

 jaws cannot be dislocated without fracture, 

 and that, when once a Badger has got his 

 teeth home, it will be extremely difficult 

 to make him loose his hold. Sir Alfred 

 Pease, in his excellent little book on the 

 Badger — to which I would refer my 

 readers for an entertaining and well- 

 written account of the animal from a 

 sporting as well as from a zoological 

 aspect — gives the following gruesome 

 instance of this power of grip : " The 

 Badger held him (a keeper) by the wrist 

 for ten minutes with his arm stretched 

 up the hole ; when he let go his hold the 

 hand was hanging by a few shreds, and 

 had, of course, to be amputated." A man's 

 wrist crosswise in a Badger's mouth would 

 be an object of just the right proportions 

 to get full work out of the specialised 

 jaw mechanism, and the laceration would 

 of course be increased by the man's 

 endeavours to free himself. 



With the note that the abnormality 

 of the exitensor muscles of a Badger's 

 fore-Hmb was held by Cuvier to augment 

 greatly its power as a digging tool (a 

 Badger's fore feet, besides possessing 

 larger claws, are in themselves consider- 



GOING OUT. 



