242 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. [cnap. xxxz. 
reach to attack save the badger’s formidable array of teeth and 
claws. . 
Though nearly extinct as one of the fere nature of England, 
the extensive woods and tracts of rocks in the north of Scotland 
will, I hope, prevent the badyer’s becoming, like the beaver and 
other animals, wholly a creature of history, and existing only in 
record. Much should I regret that this respectable representa- 
tive of so ancient a family, the comrade of mammoths and other 
wonders of the antediluvian world, should become quite extir- 
pated. Living, too, in remote and uncultivated districts, he 
very seldom commits any depredations deserving of death or 
persecution, but subsists on the wild succulent grasses and roots, 
and the snails and reptiles which he finds in the forest glades, 
or, on rare occasions, makes capture of young game or wounded 
sabbits or hares, but I do not believe that he does or can hunt 
down any game that would not otherwise fall a prey to crow or 
weasel, or which has the full use of its limbs. It is only wounded 
and injured animals that he can catch. 
It is difficult to understand how any person who is not lost to 
every sense of humanity and shame can take delight in the 
cowardly and brutal amusement of badger-baiting—instead of 
amusement, I should have said, the disgusting exhibition of a 
peaceable and harmless animal worried by fierce and powerful 
dogs. The poor badger, too, has probably been kept for a 
length of time in a confined and close hutch, thereby losing half 
his energy and strength ; while the dogs, trained to the work and 
in full vigour of wind and limb, attack him in the most tender 
and vulnerable parts. Truly, I always feel a wish to make the 
badger and his keeper change places for a few rounds. Not that 
I would pay the former so bad a compliment as to suppose that 
he would take delight in tormenting even so great a brute as his 
gaoler must be, 
