THE BADGER. 13 



duced young when she had been kept in confinement for more 

 than twelve months. In ' The Field ' of September 17th, 1864, 

 Mr. J. Freeland Young, of Hull, states, on the authority of 

 Mr. John Seaman, Superintendent of the Hull Zoological 

 Gardens, that a Badger brought forth young after being shut up 

 in a cage there for fifteen months. In ' The Field ' of March 

 22nd, 1868, a correspondent states that a ratcatcher named 

 Butler, living near Oxford, had had a female Badger in his pos- 

 session since November, 1860, and had kept her locked up in an 

 iron cage. On the 1st March, 1868, after she had been thus kept 

 in confinement for fifteen months, she gave birth to four young 

 ones. It certainly is a very curious fact if gestation in the 

 Badger does really extend over so much longer a period than in 

 most animals ; and if it does not, how are all these occurrences 

 to be accounted for ? 



The nearest approach to a solution of the question, perhaps, 

 has been made by Captain F. H. Salvin, who has frequently kept 

 Badgers which littered in confinement. 



Writing in ' The Zoologist' for June, 1877, he says (p. 251): 

 " My Badger, which had her first family of one (a female) on 

 February 27th last year, presented me with another family on 

 February 16th this year. Naturalists will, therefore, be glad 

 to learn that I can now settle that vexed question, the ges- 

 tation of these curious animals, for this Badger has gone with 

 young a year all but about seventeen days." After some further 

 remarks, he concludes by saying, "It has been ascertained in 

 Germany that the Roe has the power of suspending the time of 

 gestation, and this seems to be the only way of accounting for 

 the fact of wild-caught Badgers going as long as fifteen months 

 with young." 



If Professor Bischoff, of Giessen, would make the same 

 careful researches in the case of the Badger that he has done in 

 regard to the Roe-deer,* and for which, perhaps, he has better 

 opportunities than any physiologist living, we might expect ere 

 long to have a definite and satisfactory explanation of what at 

 present appears to be a curious anomaly. 



* ' Entwicklungsgeschickte des Belies.' 4to. Giessen, 1854. 



■'o^o 



