THE BADGER. 173 



picture, or any other gem of nature or of art ; 

 but having beheld a peregrine hurtle through 

 a pack of grouse, knocking four of them side- 

 ways, and never even looking round as they 

 fell, it gives me infinitely more pleasure to 

 see him on my neighbour's moor than on my 

 own. A good deal of nonsense is talked by 

 naturalists about the non-destructiveness of cer- 

 tain birds and beasts they would see preserved, 

 their service to man, and so on, but generally it 

 would be more useful to refrain from allowing 

 one's keen sentiments to get the better of one's 

 sane judgment. 



As regards the badger, I have studied him very 

 closely, and can honestly say that I have yet to 

 discover this creature guilty of a crime sufficient 

 to warrant his destruction even in a single instance. 

 There is no doubt that should he stumble across 

 a game-bird's nest, he will devour its contents as 

 greedily as he will devour the contents of a wasp's 

 nest ; but he certainly does not go out of his 

 way to look for the nests of game-birds. In 

 one instance a pheasant brought off her brood 

 amidst some long grass directly overlooked by 

 an occupied warren and within forty yards of 

 it, and had the hunting of eggs been in any 

 way the badgers' line of business, they could not 

 have failed to locate this feast. The fact is that 

 normally in the spring the badger is surrounded 

 by such an abundance of food which requires no 

 hunting that there is no need for him to hunt 

 live prey ; and since he is a slow-moving beast, 

 he would not be exactly successful as a hunts- 

 man even were he so disposed. True that he has 

 flesh-tearing teeth and goodness knows he needs 

 them for purposes of self-defence but, like the 



