The TJneven-Legged Badger. 
79 
Thomas Browne, in his Enquiry concerning Vulgar Errors , 
ridicules this idea, and points out that as, like other 
animals, it uses its legs diagonally, the brevity had been 
more tolerable in the cross legs. 
Drayton, in his poetical account of the Flood, probably 
refers to the use made of the skin of this animal as the 
outer covering for the Jewish tabernacle :— 
“ Tli’ uneven-legg’d badger, whose eye-pleasing skin 
The case to many a curious thing hath been, 
Since that great flood, his fortresses forsakes 
Wrought in the earth, and tho’ but halting, makes 
Up to the Ark.” 
( Noah’s Flood.) 
Canon Tristram, however, considers that though the 
badger is found commonly in Palestine, it was not 
likely to have been attainable in sufficient numbers in 
the Sinaitic wilderness to have furnished skins to the 
amount required. He imagines that the animal referred 
to in the Bible was the seal, or dugong; both of which 
animals, together with the dolphin, are found in consider¬ 
able abundance in the Bed Sea. The badger is also 
spoken of as furnishing the sandals of the Jewish women 
(Natural History of the Bible , 1873, p. 44). 
Topsell mentions two kinds of badgers— 
“ one resembling a dog in his feet, which is cald canine, the other 
a hog in his cloven hoofe, and is cald swinish : also these differ in the 
fashion of their snowt, one resembling the snowt of a dog, the other of 
a swine, and in their meat, the one eating flesh and carrion like a 
dogge, the other roots and fruits like a hog; both kinds have bene 
found in Normandy and other parts of France and Sicillie. In Italy 
and Germany they eat grayes flesh and boile with it peares, which 
maketh the flesh tast like the flesh of a porcupine. The flesh is best 
in September if it be fat, and of the two kindes, the swinish badger is 
better flesh then the other ” (Page 34.) 
For this distinction Topsell is probably indebted to 
Olaus Magnus, who writes:— 
