s invention should be invaluable. Instead of
having to be destroyed, or being killed by the hounds in covert, owing
to a broken leg, it is ten to one that Master Reynard would be released
very little the worse for his temporary confinement. Moreover, as Sir
Herbert Maxwell points out, dog owners will be grateful to the inventor
when their favourites accidentally find their way into one of these
traps and are released without smashed bones and bleeding feet. Any kind
of trap is but a diabolical contrivance at best, but these "humane
patents" are a vast improvement, and do the work better than the old, as
I can testify, having used them from the time Sir Herbert Maxwell first
called attention to them, and being quite satisfied with them.

Badgers are almost as mysterious in their ways and habits as the otter.
Nobody believes there are badgers about except those who look for their
characteristic tracks about the fox-earths. Every now and then, however,
a badger is dug out or discovered in some way in places where they were
unheard of before. We have one here now.

A few years ago I saw a pack of foxhounds find a badger in Chearsley
Spinneys in Oxfordshire. They hunted him round and round for about ten
minutes. I saw him just in front of the hounds; a great, fine specimen
he was too. As far as I remember, the hounds killed him in covert, and
then went away on the line of a fox.

A year or two ago three fine young badgers were captured near
Bourton-on-the-Water, on the Cotswolds. When I was shown them I was told
they would not feed in confinement. Finding a large lobworm, I picked it
up and gave it to one of them. He ate it with the utmost relish. His
brown and grey little body shook with emotion when I spoke to him
kindly--just as a dog trembles when you pet him. I am not certain,
however, whether the badger trembled out of gratitude for the lobworm or
out of rage and disgust at being confined in a cage.

Badgers would make delightful pets if they had a little less _scent_:
nature, as everybody knows, has endowed them with this quality to a
remarkable degree; they have the power of emitting or retaining it at
their own discretion.

Badger-baiting with terriers is not an amusement which commends itself
to humane sportsmen. It is hard luck on the terriers, even more than on
the badger. The dogs have a very bad time if they go anywhere near him.

Talking of terriers, how endless are the instances of superhuman
sagacity i