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 blaireau, 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 brock, — probably of Celtic 

 origin, — which survives to this day in the north- 



