THE BADGER 



In this theory I am strengthened by a 

 French author, Edmond Le Masson, who 

 writes — "The badger does not always give 

 evidence of his presence in his woody retreat. 

 . . . There, should one go to see him, he 

 may, from pure idleness, remain shut up, it 

 being easy for him to support himself during 

 the longest period of retirement by licking 

 the secretion which oozes from the pouch 

 under his tail." The author goes on to give 

 an account which was sent to the French 

 papers by M. Recope, Garde General at 

 Marly-le-Roi, of a badger that was shut in a 

 culvert without any food whatever for forty- 

 five days, walled in on every side, and where 

 no tree root could penetrate. A gamekeeper, 

 a noted trapper, had blocked the exit, and 

 tried in every way he could devise to trap 

 him, from February i8, 1853, to April 4, 

 and when at last he succumbed to a ruse of 

 the keeper's he was quite lively, and weighed 

 nearly 19 lbs. It appears that however care- 

 fully his traps were set in the mouth of the 

 exit, the badger came every night and rolled 

 on them and struck them, as they will do 



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