NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



Huntsmen have usually a strong prejudice against 

 badgers, claiming that not only do they at times dis- 

 possess the fox of its earth, but that they will, on 

 occasion, even destroy young cubs. These charges 

 are based upon very slender evidence. Now and again 

 it may have chanced that a badger has turned a fox out 

 of an earth ; but it is pretty certain, on the other hand, 

 that the fox displays exactly the same tactics, and takes 

 to himself the home and abiding-place of some badger 

 and his mate. Occasionally it has happened, where the 

 earths are large, that both fox and badger have been 

 found occupying the same fastnesses. The badger, 

 notwithstanding the fact that it has a strong smell of its 

 own, set up by a white substance exuded from a gland, 

 is a beast of extremely cleanly habits, and it is said that 

 the fox occasionally drives it from its earth by rendering 

 that ordinarily well-kept apartment uninhabitable at 

 all events by a badger. 



Some years ago, in a place where a pair of foxes and 

 a pair of badgers dwelt in the same covert-side, the 

 vixen produced a family ; one morning one or two of 

 the cubs were found outside the earth, dead. It was 

 stated that in each case the skull of the infant fox had 

 been bitten through, and the badgers were instantly 

 accused of being the murderers. There was no direct 

 evidence upon the point, and a Scottish jury would 

 probably have found the accusation " non-proven." 

 One of the badgers may have committed the crime ; but 

 on the other hand it may not. Some wandering dog 



badgers, and that these animals have greatly increased during- the last 

 quarter of a century. He adds that they are mischievous and do harm 

 in many ways. Even from the point of view of the fox-hunter, however, 

 this extirpation of badgers seems to me a trifle unreasonable. Grant 

 informs me that he has killed as many as four badgers in one day, with 

 hounds, and has dug out as many as eight (old and young) from one 

 earth. He conducts his digging operations in the summer time. 



