THE BADGER 



even a badger's patience can be exhausted, 

 as the following history of my own experi- 

 ence will show. I would premise, however, 

 that I do not credit the oft-repeated story 

 that the fox gets rid of the badger by leaving 

 his evacuations in the badger's earth. Being 

 the less and weaker animal, all a fox does is 

 allowed on sufferance. My suspicions of a 

 badger's capability to wage war on foxes 

 were first aroused some years ago. The 

 badgers had made a fine double set of earths 

 on the north side of a hill in a neighbouring 

 larch wood, where no effort on my part to 

 get foxes to breed and stay had succeeded. 

 No sooner, however, was a colony of badgers 

 established than foxes haunted the holes and 

 covert. In a succession of years there was 

 as certain to be a litter of fox cubs in the 

 badger earth as a sunrise on the morrow. 



What happened each spring was that the 

 foxes and badgers frequented both sets 

 indiscriminately till about March. \\'hen the 

 vixen lay in the badgers abandoned the set 

 of holes where she was, and restricted them- 

 selves to the other set some twenty yards 



72 



