222 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



from wild Badgers. About this time the small one disappeared, and the 

 other two lived all the winter in the wood-lodge, having, as we could see, 

 carried in quantities of grass and bracken, the latter from some heaps 

 of small potatoes over which it had been thrown to keep out frost. 

 Numbers of potatoes were also carried away, but were never eaten. They 

 did not regularly hybernate, but sometimes did not show for several days. 

 After a fall of snow I tracked one of them a very long way to a sand-pit, 

 where there was a fox-earth. About the middle of March, 1881, we 

 distinctly heard young ones whining and chattering in the recesses of the 

 wood-lodge, and did not see either of the old ones for a fortnight, when the 

 female came out. She was very hungry, and wonderfully quick and active. 

 She had a smooth appearance about her head, and her hair looked thin, 

 reminding me in fact very much of a Ferret or Polecat under similar 

 circumstances. She came out every evening, and we could hear the young 

 ones continually. All this time we had lost sight of the male, and I had 

 to leave home for a fortnight, so for all that period I do not know what 

 happened. On my return home there was no sign of young ones ; all was 

 quiet, and only the old female was seen. She used to come in the evening 

 from the other direction, and I traced her to the sand-pit about three 

 quarters of a mile off. She was always in a great hurry, but as tame as 

 ever, and she used to surprise me with the way she used to spring up a very 

 steep bank. She would go the round of all the dog-kennels for any scraps 

 they might have laid up, each dog always turning out for her. Now comes 

 the sad part of the story. My gardener told me that while I was away he 

 had heard a noise in the wood-lodge like a chain rattling, so I decided to 

 get all the wood out. This was done, and we came on two large nests, 

 right at the end of the lodge, and by one of them lay the male Badger 

 dead, entangled in the wood by the chain of a gin that the poor fellow had 

 on his foot. He smelt dreadfully, and this was of course the reason of the 

 female moving her young away. Now as these Badgers had young by the 

 time they were twelve months old, it cannot be said that twelve months is 

 the usual period of gestation. The noisy period in October was probably 

 the time when the female was in season, and if so, it would seem that four 

 to five months in this case was the period of gestation. Is it not possible, 

 that when a female Badger is caught when in litter, the development of the 

 foetus may be suspended until she gets over the shock of her capture ? To 

 return to my story. The old female continued to visit us during the 

 summer, but towards autumn her visits became fewer and fewer and at last 

 ceased. All that now remains is a thriving colony of Badgers in the sand- 

 pit to which she originally moved her young. — E. G. Meade- Waldo (Rope 

 Hill, Lymington). 



Destruction of Martens in Ireland. — In his article on the Marten 

 in Ireland (p. 141) Mr. Barrett Hamilton gives " an extract from a law" 



