9218 Sucklers. 
These remarks arise naturelly enough out of that particular inquiry 
which I have selected as a title for this paper; it is one to which my 
attention has been repeatedly called by the following paragraphs 
selected from the ‘ Field’ newspaper. Have we really no observers 
capable of solving so simple a problem? Must we ever rely on what 
“An Old Bushman” calls “general opinion”? The modification 
“general opinion here” leaves the context equally vague. Would he 
himself be satisfied thus entirely to ignore the foundation of all Science, 
observation ? 
I appeal to the readers of the ‘ Zoologist’: not merely to every prin- 
cipal town, but to every village, to every hamlet, whither the ‘ Zoologist’ 
wends its way: surely it is not too much to expect that, amid such a 
host of readers, some scraps of reliable information may be gathered, 
and, when gathered, preserved in these pages for the use of naturalists 
yet unborn. 
Epwarp NEWMAN. 
Period of Gestation of the Badger.—Being an old sportsman, and a 
constant reader of the ‘Field, I take considerable interest in your 
columns on Natural History; and as I have had pretty good oppor- 
tunities of watching the badger, I propose to give you the result of my 
observations, hoping that by so doing I may induce some more learned 
man than myself to explain its habits, food, time of gestation, &c. 
About the year 1831, as I was looking after the game in Weston Wood, 
about four miles from Leamington, I footed a badger over a sand-hill 
full of rabbit-holes, and tracked it into a hole. I put a terrier in after 
it, and as I heard a hot engagement going on between the badger and 
the dog, I set to work to dig them out. After bagging the badger, I 
took it to Weston Hall and turned it loose into a perfectly secure hot- 
house. The badger lived there on rabbits, meat, milk and water for ~ 
thirteen months, and then one morning we found her suckling one 
young one. Of the performances of this young one I can give you 
several anecdotes in a future letter, if you wish it, as it was raised by 
hand in a farm-house, and shared the hearth-rug with some pet dogs. 
I much regret that I am not able, at this distance of time, to say what 
month the badger was caught in and what month she whelped, as L 
made no memorandum of it at the time. But I am quite sure she was 
confined in a perfectly secure place for thirteen months before she 
‘dropped her cub. Ifa badger could have got into her place she could 
have got out; therefore I am anxious to know what is the period of a 
