232 SYSTEM OF KENNEL AND 



Tier upon tier or floor after floor of passages and 

 lodging-rooms, to the depth sometimes of twelve or 

 fourteen feet, when lying against a sandy hill, have 

 been exposed to our view ; and once, in particular, 

 we remember employing three men for a week in 

 digging for a favourite terrier which had gone to 

 ground after a fox. So various were the windings, 

 that we were obliged to give up further excavations 

 in despair ; and at the end of the ninth day, during 

 which time the dog had been buried in the bowels 

 of the earth, he emerged, a perfect skeleton, bones 

 and skin only, but with the greatest possible care 

 he recovered. The cause of his long confinement 

 was that the fox kept throwing up sand in his 

 way as a barrier between them, which the dog in 

 turn had to throw behind him, thus unconsciously 

 burying himself deeper and deeper, until a return 

 became impossible ; but fortunately we had cut 

 across his track, thus giving him an opportunity of 

 escape. Badgers are the chief excavators of these 

 subterranean cavities, for which purpose they are 

 naturally qualified by their long claws, resembling 

 those of a mole; and it is an old saying "that 

 b.-id^rrs, like fools, make houses for foxes and 

 sensible people to live in." These very beautiful 

 and harmless animals having, however, been put 

 into the keeper's catalogue of vermin, are rarely 

 now, if ever, met with in this fell destroyer's 

 precincts, although everybody knows, who knows 

 anything about natural history, that the badger is 

 supplied with these claws by nature to dig his 



