242 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. [CHAP, xxxi 



reach to attack save the badger's formidable array of teeth and 

 claws. 



Though nearly extinct as one of ihefera natures of England, 

 the extensive woods and tracts of rocks in the north of Scotland 

 will, I hope, prevent the badger's becoming, like the beaver and 

 other animals, wholly a creature of history, and existing only in 

 record. Much should I regret that this respectable representa- 

 tive of so ancient a family, the comrade of mammoths and other 

 wonders of the antediluvian world, should become quite extir- 

 pated. Living, too, in remote and uncultivated districts, he 

 very seldom commits any depredations deserving of death or 

 persecution, but subsists on the wild succulent grasses and roots, 

 and the snails and reptiles which he finds in the forest glades, 

 or, on rare occasions, makes capture of young game or wounded 

 rabbits or hares, but I do not believe that he does or can hunt 

 down any game that would not otherwise fall a prey to crow or 

 weasel, or which has the full use of its limbs. It is only wounded 

 and injured animals that he can catch. 



It is difficult to understand how any person who is not lost to 

 every sense of humanity and shame can take delight in the 

 cowardly and brutal amusement of badger-baiting instead of 

 amusement, I should have said, the disgusting exhibition of a 

 peaceable and harmless animal worried by fierce and powerful 

 dogs. The poor badger, too, has probably been kept for a 

 length of time in a confined and close hutch, thereby losing half 

 his energy and strength ; while the dogs, trained to the work and 

 in full vigour of wind and limb, attack him in the most tender 

 and vulnerable parts. Truly, I always feel a wish to make the 

 badger and his keeper change places for a few rounds. Not that 

 I would pay the former so bad a compliment as to suppose that 

 he would take delight in tormenting even so great a brute as his 

 gaoler must be. 



