78 The Animal-Lore of Shahspeare s Time . 
“ Smooth bawson cub, the young grice of a gray, 
Twa tyny urshins and this ferret gay ” (i. 1). 
The first line of this passage has given rise to some 
discussion. Whalley reads “ bawson’s cub, and the young 
ones of a badger.” Gifford, in his edition, explains bawson, 
which, used as a substantive, is a badger, to mean here 
plump, sleek. This epithet cannot be applied to a full- 
grown badger, but might very well be said of a cub. 
Grice, he says, is a suckling of any kind. That this is 
the correct explanation is shown by the lines a little 
later on:— 
** Thou woo thy love! thy mistress ! with twa hedgehogs ? 
A stinkand brock, a polecat ? Out, thou houlet! ” 
The only mention of this animal that occurs in 
Shakspeare is when Sir Toby Belch applies it as a term 
of reproach to Malvolio : “ Marry, hang thee, brock ! ” 
(Twelfth Night, ii. 5, 114). 
The absurd idea that the badger’s right legs were of 
a different length from those on its left, to enable it to 
run with ease on the side of a hill, lasted long after this 
period. William Browne, in his poems on country life, 
is evidently a firm believer in the notion:— 
“ And as that beast hath legs, which shepherds feare, 
Yclep’d a badger, which our lambs doth teare, 
One long, the other short, that when he runs 
Upon the plaines he halts; but when he wons 
On craggy rocks, or steepy hills, we see 
None runs more swift, nor easier than he.” 
(. Britannia’s Pastorals, book i., song 4.) 
Topsell writes of the badger,— 
“ His back is broad, his legs as some say longer on the right side 
then on the left, and therefore he runneth best when he getteth to the 
side of a hill or a cart road way.” (Page 34.) 
To correspond with this statement, the badger in the 
woodcut which accompanies it is represented as using the 
legs on the same side together instead of alternately. Sir 
