COURAGE OF SMALLER ANIMALS 149 



was an indefatigable ratter, and on one occasion went 

 to ground and refused to come out for so long 

 that we began to be seriously alarmed for his safety. 

 When he did appear he was quite unrecognisable, tem- 

 porarily blind, and scarcely able to walk ; for the 

 sticky soil in which he had been working had matted 

 and caked on his long hair till he looked like a lump 

 of yellow clay. 



It is true that he was only doing battle with 

 rats, but these must be sufficiently alarming oppo- 

 nents for a dog of a petted lapdog breed, and in 

 his own way he was almost as plucky as the bigger 

 terriers used to drive the badger to the end of his 

 hole and keep him there while the trenches are made 

 to dig the animal out. Far underground, faced by 

 a very much larger and better armed foe, in darkness, 

 heat, and during the last part of the digging in scenes 

 of half-subterranean battle, amid dust and commo- 

 tion, the terrier meets the charges of the badger, 

 and " holds him up " by barking and demonstration, 

 even if the latter has bitten him badly. Nineteen 

 couple of the Cleveland pack once attacked a badger 

 in the open without doing him any harm whatever 

 before they were whipped off, though many of them 

 were badly bitten. What, then, must be the courage 

 of the diminutive terrier who descends into the ground 

 and faces the badger in the galleries and mines of his 

 own digging ? 



As a rule we naturally avoid any attempt at domes- 

 ticating the fighting breeds, and turn our attention 

 to the milder-tempered species : but it is amusing 



