174 THE BADGER. 



black-bear, he can and does subsist very comfort- 

 ably on an exclusively vegetable diet, with a little 

 rubbish thrown in, should he actually stumble across 

 it in his short-sighted, pig-like forages. Except in 

 the spring (when the badger has vegetable foods 

 everywhere), the sort of game man protects is 

 chiefly of the variety demanding, and often defying, 

 the swiftness, cleverness, and long-sightedness of 

 Reynard at his best. At all events the keepers 

 of the New Forest, who know as much about 

 badgers as any one, have no quarrel with them 

 except that their many earths require a good deal 

 of stopping before each meet of the fox-hounds, 

 which is the only reason why badgers are kept in 

 check in this region. 



FOOD. 



Roots, insects, worms, beetles, frogs, and berries 

 when in season, are the chief food of Brock at 

 home. In the forests of the Vosges Mountains, 

 south of Verdun, there are many badgers, and 

 during the war they seemed to lose much of their 

 fear of man, often appearing on the mountain-roads 

 quite near the muleteers, and occupying the forests 

 right up to the fighting-line, apparently undisturbed 

 by the noise of the guns, since no one had the time 

 to hunt them. Here their food consisted in the 

 season entirely of the wild raspberries that are 

 abundant on the open hillsides, while earlier in the 

 year beetles and other insects formed their staple 

 diet. In the New Forest they appear to live 

 chiefly on beetles, destroying thousands of the 

 common black-backed variety to be found in the 

 roots of moss, the wings of which they do not 

 digest. In winter roots, or almost any other soft 

 substances they can nose out of the ground, are 



