1 86 DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



even during the nineteenth century it was so common that 

 many a parish had its " brockair " or brock-hunter, and in 

 several counties it was even sought after for food, Badger 

 hams being preserved for winter use. Dr Campbell wrote 

 in 1774 that the Badger is 



hunted and destroyed whenever found ; and being by Nature an inactive 

 and indolent Creature, is commonly fat, and therefore they make his hind 

 Quarters into Hams in North Britain and Wales. 



In the Spectator of Sept. 29, 1917, a correspondent'gives 

 many recipes for cooking the Badger, which are said to have 

 been familiar to his mother as practised in the Outer 

 Hebrides 1 . 



The sportsman, hunter, baiter and the ham factor must 

 have reduced its numbers, but the Badger is a shy nocturnal 

 creature whose earth is not always readily found. Indirectly 

 rather than directly man has wrought its doom, for a great 

 blow to its existence in Scotland seems to have fallen with 

 the extension of cultivation in the latter half of the nine- 

 teenth century, and especially with the feverish cutting of 

 woodland and breaking in of waste ground which accom- 

 panied the agricultural boom of the 'fifties and 'sixties. 

 These processes destroyed many a safe refuge, and exposing 

 the Badger to the attacks of man, exterminated it from many 

 a district where it was once common. There is probably no 

 county in Scotland where it is not much rarer nowadays 

 than it was a century ago, and although at the present day 

 it still occurs in the wilder parts of the Highlands, in the 

 Lowlands it has become exceedingly scarce as a native of 

 the soil, many of the examples now recorded being no more 

 than escapes from confinement or their descendants. 



GAME BEASTS AND BIRDS 



The history of the more important game creatures has 

 been traced in the chapter dealing with their protection, and 

 since the stringency of protection is a measure of the inten- 

 sity of destruction, the account there given illustrates suffi- 

 ciently the trend of the slaughter due to sport. 



1 While the recipes may be correct, the locality seems to be at fault, 

 for, according to Alston and Harvie-Brown, Badgers are unknown in the 

 Outer Hebrides. 



