GIBB : MUSTELID^ OF NORTHUMBERLAND. 



23 



and various other articulata, as well in their grub and pupal as in their 

 perfect stages, together with the roots of succulent plants, are made subser- 

 vient to his palate ; young rabbits also become an especial dainty in contribu- 

 ting to his homely taste, to capture which he enters their burrows, and should 

 they prove too small to admit of his greater bulk he will speedily enlarge 

 their entrance, if they are placed in a sandy bank, as is most generally the 

 case, and seldom fails when such a mode of introduction is begun, in securing 

 his victims. Some believe him to be a destructive animal in our game pre- 

 serves, and that he destroys the young and even the adult game birds. In a 

 limited sense only is this true, for the subject of our remarks lacks agility 

 in locomotion, to constitute him a successful game hunter, and his usual and 

 more natural food, which I have here described, requires little exertion to 

 procure, while to prey uj^on game demands the full exercise of faculties for 

 which by nature, acquired habit, and instinct, he is in no way adapted. Like 

 the otter he is crepuscular in his habits and feeds almost exclusively at night 

 and during the spring, summer, and autumn months when Hesperus begins 

 to shroud himseK in his sable mantle, he leaves his buiTow and stalks abroad 

 for food, and as he winds his way along a broken path you may see him 

 nosing the ground and with his snout turning up the surface for worms, roots, 

 and the larvse of insects, making frequent windings in his course, now 

 sto]Dping to catch a lost scent, or sitting erect on hinder legs as if listening 

 for some anticipated danger, at which time he might be taken with his 

 curious facial disc, for a sentinel or scout of the wild Sioux of the Colorado 

 wilds. In 1863 a very fine specimen was captured near to Acklington in an 

 ordinary rabbit trap which had been placed at the entrance to a rabbit 

 burrow, and this brings me to mention the susceptibility of the foot to pain : 

 for in this instance the jaws of the trap, possessing no great force or cohesive 

 power only encircled the extreme end of the middle toe of the right for^ foot, 

 and although but a slight exertion was needed to free himself from the trap, 

 yet it was sufficient to retain him an " unwilling captive," until he was 

 secured the next morning by the trapper. The end of this individual, though 

 spared the painful ordeal of being baited with dogs, was perhaps not less cruel 

 than that which too often befals the most of his luckless race that have the 

 misfortune to come under the protectorship and tender mercies of intellectual 

 bipeds — for he was inhumanly shot in his prison house, that his skin might 

 be forwarded to a taxidermist, perchance to be bungled in the stuffing by an 

 •unskilful artificer in the craft, into a distorted and shapeless mass of fur. 

 The badger's power of scent is strongly developed — by the aid of which he is 



