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PASSIONAL ZOOLOGY. 
tack of the badger’s earth is a siege by all the rules, in which wo 
must dig parallels and trenches, and sometimes spring mines. 
Terrier dogs are sent against it ; they attack it boldly, and 
their barkings indicate to the sappers the direction to be followed. 
The beast opposes a desperate resistance to its assailants, and 
often makes the conquerors pay dearly for their victory. The 
badger has the instinct of feigning death like the fox, then to 
seize its chance of revenge. 
In Belgium, where this species abounds, and bears the name of 
Taisson, the badger taken alive is destined to the circus-games, ac- 
cording to a custom which is said to remount to the days of the 
Roman dominion ; the Belgian people shows itself greedy of these 
combats, like the people of Madrid of its bull-fights. 
The day of these fights is announced by the press and by hand- 
bills ; they cite the names of the celebrated dogs who will take 
part in the battle. These contests are often murderous for the 
assailants. Badgers have been seen to make sublime defenses, 
and thrown upon their backs with parched throats and open 
claws, to hold at a respectful distance four or five dogs at once. 
It is certain that this commercial feudalism will give us thread to 
twist over before crying quarter. 
THE OTTER. 
The carnivorous quadrupeds, for the most part, make their 
dwellings in the earth ; but a series is completed only by connect- 
ing itself to the adjacent series by its extremities or ambiguous 
types. The series of carnivorous hunters, conformably to this law 
of harmony, has in the otter, cast one of its winglets into the do- 
main of the waters. 
The Otter is a piscivorous cannibal, a quadruped preferring the 
meat of pike and carp to that of mutton and hare. 
I am disposed to great indulgence toward the civilizees, because 
they are the victims of their own ignorance, and then because God 
has inflicted on them the banker and misery, as punishment for 
their blindness ; but a folly which I can hardly understand, is their 
stupid indifference with regard to the otter. They complain of 
