44 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



Badgers when surveying our fell lands, only furnishes a brief 

 note: 'Badgers are now [1875] extinct in the wild state in 

 Cumberland, but were not scarce till about the end of the 

 eighteenth century. . . . There were brock holes in Eskat Woods, 

 near where the cottage now stands, and these animals being fond 

 of basking in the sun, a hedger came suddenly upon two of 

 them sleeping, and, making a quick stroke with his bill-hook, he 

 wounded one, but both got into their hole and were never seen 

 again. These were the last known in that part.' 1 



Whether the Badger really became quite extinct in Lakeland 

 within the limits of the eighteenth century is a difficult point 

 to settle. On the whole, the balance of evidence seems to favour 

 the belief that this species lingered on the fells of Cartmell and 

 Windermere for at any rate the first thirty years of our own 

 century, a view favoured by Mr. T. Coward. Mr. T. Lindsay 

 was crossing Birker Fell, Eskdale, on the 24th of February 1850, 

 when his hounds detected the presence of an animal, which 

 proved to be a Badger, among the rocks. It was fierce, and 

 made a plucky fight for life. Tradition had long associated the 

 locality with the Badger, but none of those then living in Esk- 

 dale had ever seen a wild Badger on the fell before, though they 

 had heard the old people talk of them. This was a Badger of 

 23 lbs. weight. Another was trapped in the middle of the 

 present century near Bridekirk, by Eichard Chapman, the cele- 

 brated wrestler. Another was caught by the Newtons near 

 Broughton-in-Furness, between 1850 and 1860. It was pro- 

 posed to sell this Badger for baiting, but the men fell out about 

 the sale, and being unable to agree about its disposal, they 

 settled their difference by drowning the poor Badger. Another 

 was dug out at Dearbields, Grasmere, in February 1863. It 

 weighed 15 lbs. The capture of this Badger elicited from the 

 Westmorland Gazette the remark that ' the old hunters say that 

 the last Badger caught in Westmorland was in 1823.' It would 

 be easy to extend the list of Badgers captured in Lakeland 

 within a comparatively recent period. The late Mr. George 

 Mawson recorded that a large Badger was caught in a wood near 

 Cockermouth in February 1867, adding that from whence or 

 1 Cumbriana, p. 172. 



