THE BADGER 



scientific about them. I have no microscope 

 and no dissecting-room. 



It is June. A hot summer's day is dying, 

 and the sun is sinking through soft clouds of 

 glory behind the pine woods on the hill. A 

 thousand birds in vale and woodland are 

 singing with an ecstasy and sweetness that 

 seem tenderly conscious that the hours of 

 song are numbered — that the days are 

 coming when darkness or dawn will steal 

 over the land in silence, unheralded as it 

 is to-day by their wild sweet notes. We 

 wander across the pasture by the cattle, and 

 along the side of the ripening meadow 

 towards the wooded bank under the edge 

 of the moor, where the badger has his home. 

 As we near the covert, a few rabbits that 

 have ventured far out into the field frisk up 

 the hill, alarming their less adventurous com- 

 panions, and all make for the shelter of the 

 wood, displaying a hundred little cotton tails. 



As the gate into the plantation opens a 

 few wood-pigeons stop their cooing and fly 

 swiftly up and out of the trees with a clean 

 cutting slap-slap of their wings to some other 



3 



