76 THE BADGER. 



are encouraged for the table ; but from the fetid odour, and 

 some other causes, it is not generally used in Europe. The odour 

 belongs to its peculiar apparatus only, and that can easily be 

 removed without giving the least taint to the flesh of the 

 animal. Both skin and body could thus be turned to as 

 valuable account as those of any of the animals which are called 

 game. The hind quarters, when properly cured, make excellent 

 hams. In Britain, however, the badger is seldom brought into 

 public notice, except in some of those unmeaning and disgusting 

 exhibitions to which the ignorant and the worthless give the 

 prostituted name of ' sports/ but which, to the credit of the 

 age, are fast becoming as unfashionable as they are useless and 

 brutalizing."* 



It is not many years, however, since this cruel and barbarous 

 sport was permitted even in the British metropolis. In the 

 Sporting Magazine of October, 1801, we are informed, that 

 badger-baiting takes place, on every Monday afternoon, between 

 Field Lane and Black-Boy Alley. To every humane mind, it 

 must be a lamentable fact that the objects of cruelty, under 

 the cloak of manly sports, are generally those animals which 

 are the least offensive, and the most timid. 



THE RATEL. (Mellivora Capensis. F. Cuvier.) 

 Indian Badger. Honey Weasel. Honey Bear. 



The ratel inhabits the Cape of Good Hope. It is about ten 

 inches or a foot in height, and two feet and a half in length 

 from the snout to the rump $ and its tail is about six inches 

 long. The fur, though rather smooth, is stiff and wiry ; and 

 the hide is exceedingly tough, and so loose that, according to 

 Sparrman, " if any body catches hold of him by the hind parts 

 of his neck, he is able to turn round, as it were, in his skin, and 

 bite the arm of the person that seizes him." So impenetrable is 



* Cyclopaedia of Natural History (1834), vol. i. p. 281. 



