almost as attractive as ermine if only it were
enhanced by as high a price. Whether badger will ever grow in favour
like musk-rat or 'coon, and play an important part in the returns of the
fur exporters, is doubtful. The world takes its fashions from European
capitals; and European capitals are too damp for badger to be in
fashion with them. Certainly, with the private dealers of the North and
West, badger is yearly becoming more important.

Like the musk-rat, badger is prime in the autumn. Wherever the
hunting-grounds of the animals are, there will the hunting-grounds of
the trapper be. Badgers run most where gophers sit sunning themselves on
the clay mounds, ready to bolt down to their subterranean burrows on the
first approach of an enemy. Eternal enemies these two are, gopher and
badger, though they both live in ground holes, nest their lairs with
grasses, run all summer and sleep all winter, and alike prey on the
creatures smaller than themselves--mice, moles, and birds. The gopher,
or ground squirrel, is smaller than the wood squirrel, while the badger
is larger than a Manx cat, with a shape that varies according to the
exigencies of the situation. Normally, he is a flattish, fawn-coloured
beast, with a turtle-shaped body, little round head, and small legs with
unusually strong claws. Ride after the badger across the prairie and he
stretches out in long, lithe shape, resembling a baby cougar, turning at
every pace or two to snap at your horse, then off again at a hulking
scramble of astonishing speed. Pour water down his burrow to compel him
to come up or down, and he swells out his body, completely filling the
passage, so that his head, which is downward, is in dry air, while his
hind quarters alone are in the water. In captivity the badger is a
business-like little body, with very sharp teeth, of which his keeper
must beware, and some of the tricks of the skunk, but inclined, on the
whole, to mind his affairs if you will mind yours. Once a day regularly
every afternoon out of his lair he emerges for the most comical sorts of
athletic exercises. Hour after hour he will trot diagonally--because
that gives him the longest run--from corner to corner of his pen,
rearing up on his hind legs as he reaches one corner, rubbing the back
of his head, then down again and across to the other corner, where he
repeats the performance. There can be no reason for the badger doing
this, unless it was his habit in the wilds when he