THE BADGER. 9 



that you might have covered them with a sack. They are a very 

 cleanly animal, and will not take into the earth the mud that clings 

 to their feet after a wet night, but remove it with the aid of a 

 branch of a silver birch-tree that overhangs the entrance. After 

 remaining long enough to satisfy ourselves, we stepped out of the 

 bushes, when, of course, the Badgers scampered down their hole 

 on seeing us. Great pains have been taken to get these animals 

 to frequent the place, my brother-in-law taking the trouble to get 

 some from Gloucestershire some years ago to turn out. He tells 

 me they have bred for some years past in the same place, so that 

 he must have helped to increase their number in the neighbour- 

 hood, but I expect they get destroyed in their wanderings. 



" The good results of having such animals about are that there 

 are no wasps' nest about the place, these creatures having hunted 

 out all their nests for the sake of the grubs. I noticed that 

 directly the food was thrown down for the Badgers, several 

 rats made their appearance from the rabbit-holes, several of 

 which were close by, and were great pilferers of the food, much 

 to our disgust, but apparently unheeded by the Badgers. It is 

 difficult to kill the rats, except by poison, and that is too 

 dangerous where there is nearly always a litter of cubs on the 

 place. This lot of Badgers, my brother-in-law tells me, are 

 not nearly so frolicsome as last year's were. Last year's, he 

 said, would stand on their hind legs and play with one 

 another, and search each others' coats for vermin, and otherwise 

 amuse themselves. All this I saw at less than a hundred and 

 fifty yards from the house on most evenings of my stay of a 

 fortnight, so that they do not seem to mind the proximity of 

 human habitations." 



It was after the date of this letter that the vixen Fox above 

 referred to became accustomed to the presence of the Badgers, 

 and brought up her litters annually in the same earth with them. 



In April, 1886, as related in ' The Field,' of May 15th, 1886, 

 a gamekeeper in Co. Meath, traced a Badger into a Fox's 

 breeding earth in a small wood. He at once put down three 

 traps at the mouth of each of the two holes leading into the 

 earth the same evening. Next morning early he visited the 

 earth, and, to his astonishment, found the Badger trapped in one 

 hole, and a vixen Fox, suckling young, trapped in the other. 

 The keeper released the vixen into the earth, where she had her 



