NOTES AND QUERIES. 427 
Yarmouth], but they are entirely extirpated.’”’ A Suffolk gentleman of 
considerable experience as a sportsman wrote me a few days since as 
follows: ‘‘ In my youthful days I often heard old men talking about 
the large Badger-earth existing in Barnby [near Lowestoft], and the 
beasts became such a nuisance that they made an extermination raid 
on them, which would be about one hundred years ago.” He makes 
reference to one taken near that spot about twenty-five years ago, 
which ‘“‘ was shown on a handbarrow about the streets by one ‘ Dozy’ 
Goffin,” and cites an example killed ten years after, which I think 
more than probably was an escape, for at that particular time (in 
1893) I was negotiating for an adult Badger with a publican at 
Bungay, when he wrote “his regrets that the night before my letter 
arrived it broke from its cage and was lost.” Bungay and Lowestoft 
are not much above twelve miles apart. 
Private communications reached me during the correspondence 
from one gentleman who has been trying to preserve the Badger in 
his neighbourhood (which he wishes not to be divulged), and with 
apparent success. He speaks of ‘‘the main earth... [in which] has 
been a litter for the last eight years.... It now resembles a fortifi- 
cation, and it is almost incredible the amount of sand they have 
worked out. Four have been taken out this year alive; last year the 
one... got took nearly twenty-four hours, after a previous ten hours’ 
work in vain. The year previously three were unfortunately trapped.” 
He further wrote that the captured animals were released, and that on 
another estate there is ‘‘at present a well-worked earth. ... I cannot 
find any trace of Badgers being at any time imported; certainly it 
has not been done by the West Norfolk Foxhounds in the last thirty 
or forty years.... It is no far distance [a locality in South-west 
Norfolk] to Lincolnshire and Huntingdonshire, where they have 
always existed for certain.” I share with that gentleman his wish 
that ‘“‘ whatever the past may have been, they will never be extinct in 
the future.” Whether aboriginals or not, I hope that the Badgers 
still to be found in West Norfolk will be given a better chance than 
had those unfortunate Bustards which were reintroduced into Norfolk 
a few years since; these all too easily fell victims to unscrupulous 
and ignorant gunners (one cannot call them sportsmen) who would as 
lief, but for the law, slaughter cattle and sheep that may stray into 
their preserves from a neighbouring estate as look at them. It is 
fortunate for them (the Badgers) that they possess traits and instincts 
far more likely to protect themselves than had the luckless Bustards. 
Artuur H. Parrerson (Great Yarmouth). 
