148 WILD NEIGHBORS CHAP. 
an indeterminate gray. The sharply contrasted 
stripes of white and dark brown upon its counte- 
nance would be visible when anything could be 
seen at all, and would instantly apprise any creat- 
ure what kind of visitor was approaching. These 
stripes, then, are really excellent examples of what 
Mr. A. R. Wallace calls “recognition colors,” and 
frequently also of “warning colors.” Man or brute 
catching a glimpse, in the shadow of a hole, of this 
clownish visage, as impersonal as the bodiless grin 
of the Cheshire Cat that astonished Alice in Won- 
derland, would know at once that a badger’s form 
and ferocity were behind it, and would act accord- 
ingly. An exact parallel is found in the black- 
footed ferret, whose dwelling-place and methods 
of underground foray are similar to those of our 
subject, and which is conspicuously marked only 
on the face. In neither case would awkward mis- 
takes arise when friends or allies met in the corri- 
dors of their own or an enemy’s castle, for their 
very foreheads would bear the family crest. The 
badger’s name itself is a curious historical affirma- 
tion of this scientific proposition. It means simply 
the wearer of a badge, —the marked animal. The 
old French é/atreau, still current among the 
French-Canadians of the far Northwest (in the 
corrupt form “braro”’), had an identical signifi- 
cance; and apparently the same is true of the 
early English term Jdvock,— probably of Celtic 
origin, — which survives to this day in the north- 
