Vv THE BADGER AND HIS KIN I5!I 
holes, and there ultimately mingled with the earth, 
is a most important natural process of soil-prepa- 
ration, equivalent to the farmer’s ploughing and 
manuring. To the influence that fossorial animals 
have thus exerted must be largely attributed the 
decomposition of the surface-rock over an exten- 
sive area of the plains, and its change into good 
soil, highly fertile wherever water is obtainable in 
suitable quantity. The spread, growth, and decay 
of plants would accomplish much, and is, perhaps, 
the chief agency in the production and enrichment 
of earth; but crumbling rock-sand would be very 
slowly enriched by such a plant-growth as the 
short, dry, and sparse herbage of the plains af- 
fords, were it not continually exposed to the chem- 
istry of the air, mixed with vegetable and animal 
manure, and pulverized, by these precursors of 
agriculture. 
Little is known of the reproduction of the badger. 
Godman tells us that three or four young are born 
in summer, and that the period of life may reach 
fifteen years. In the United States the animal is 
more or less active all winter, being able to search 
out or dig out enough sleeping ground-squirrels, 
marmots, etc., in spite of the frost, to satisfy its 
needs if not its appetite. Farther north, however, 
the greater cold and enforced famine induce or 
compel it to pass in semi-torpidity the more severe 
months of winter. 
Year by year the range of this animal is nar- 
