v THE BADGER AND HIS KIN 147 
His principal food, nevertheless, consists of the 
ground-squirrels, gophers, and field-mice among 
which he lives. It is beyond his ability to chase 
and catch these nimble fellows, for the badger is 
slow and clumsy; but it “is the work of a very 
few minutes for this vigorous miner to so far en- 
large their burrows that it can reach the deepest 
recesses.” 
Right here an interesting point may be con- 
sidered. Where the prairie-dogs and other sper- 
mophiles are especially numerous (and they exist 
in countless thousands in certain districts of the 
Great Plains, Columbia Basin, and southern Cali- 
fornia), there badgers gather in corresponding 
numbers, attracted by the abundance of food; and 
they must often encounter one another, as well as 
the coyote, kit-fox, ferret, and other raiders, bound 
upon the same bloody quest. To this contingency 
the curious pattern of coloring on the badger’s face 
seems to bear direct reference, if the speculations 
of the natural-selectionists have any basis in fact; 
but I am not aware that this point has been men- 
tioned by Poulton or other exponents of the phi- 
losophy of animal coloration. Let us examine it. 
The only part of a badger visible when it is sit- 
ting in the mouth of its burrow, as it likes to do, 
or is threading its way through some underground 
passage, must be its face. Now this is the only 
part of the animal that bears any distinctive color- 
mark, the remainder of the body being simply 
