ave excellent promise of
pluck and strength, was almost dropping off contentedly to sleep, when
one of the excited combatants, retreating from the fray, backed
unceremoniously, and awoke him with an accidental blow on the ribs. This
was more than the crusty sire could endure, and he administered such
prompt and indiscriminate chastisement to the youngsters, that, in a
subdued frame of mind, they forgot their differences, forgot also the
toothsome remnants of their feast, and nestled together in bed, desiring
much that their patient dam would come to console them for the ill-usage
just received.

On returning to the "set," the mother badger stayed for a few minutes at
the edge of the mound before the main entrance, and, rearing herself on
her hind-legs, rubbed her cheek against a tree-trunk, and sniffed the
air for the scent of a lurking enemy. Then, satisfied that all was safe,
she entered the deep chamber, and was greeted by the little creatures
that for an hour had expectantly awaited her arrival. Unusually
boisterous in their welcome, they instantly disregarded the presence of
their sire; and such, already, was the magic effect of the meal of raw
flesh on their tempers, that, with an eagerness hitherto unknown, they
followed every movement of their dam, till, submitting to their
importunities, she lay beside them, and fed and fondled them to sleep.

Almost nightly, she brought something new with which to tempt their
appetites--young bank-voles dug from their burrows on the margin of the
wood, weakling pigeons dropped from late nests among the leafy boughs,
snakes, and lizards, and, chiefly, suckling rabbits unearthed from the
shallow holes which the does had "stopped" with soil thrown back into
the entrance when they left to feed amid the clover.

Though young rabbits, in breeding "stops" barely a foot below the level
of the ground, were never safe from the badger's attack, a flourishing
colony dwelt within the precincts of the "set." Early in spring, when
the badgers were preparing for their expected family, a doe rabbit,
attracted by the great commotion caused by their efforts to remove the
big heap of soil thrown up at the entrance to their dwelling, hopped
quietly out of the fern, and sat for a long time watching from between
the bushes the occasional showers of loam which indicated the progress
of the work. Judged by the standard of a rabbit, Bunny was a fairly
clever little creature, and the plans she formed